Dealing For Trust
by Anti-Kryptonite
Summary: Honesty, like change, doesn't come easily to him. But he can't lose her again, so he makes a deal with himself: a secret told for every smile she gives him.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Many thanks go to Saime Joxxers for devoting a ton of time and effort into helping me with this story (and present tense)! Also thank you to everyone who reviews and follows and favorites me - definitely keeps me wanting to write and helps inspire me! :) This story is four chapters long, and I'll be posting Monday and Thursday evenings. Hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: Oh so many things referenced and used as inspiration for this story - they were written by others and don't belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

Dealing For Trust

* * *

He makes deals. That's what he does. It's who he is. He makes deals with the desperate, with the greedy, with the lost. Deals that promise better things so long as you're willing to pay the price. Deals that cannot be broken, and the deal you get is just as good as the deal you deserve.

So he makes a deal with himself. After all, he is desperate (desperate not to lose her again, desperate not to be hurt again). He is greedy (greedy for her voice saying his name and her smile breaking his heart and her touch banishing cold loneliness and her words reaching past curses and cruelty; greedy for _her_). He is lost (lost ever since she chipped his cup and laughed at his quips and didn't flinch from his touch and _came back_). He wants something better (her, her without that twist of guilt and foreboding constantly twisting his insides in a vise because he knows it cannot last). He is even willing to pay the price (because what he stands to gain is great enough to propel him past his fear).

He makes the deal, and even though he does not speak it aloud, he will not break it. If he keeps it, he will see just how good a deal he deserves (and maybe even deserve what he might gain). He will see if honesty and change are enough to make him worthy of her.

It isn't an easy deal. If it were, it wouldn't be worth making. The willingness to sacrifice is what makes a deal precious (he knows this above all). It isn't easy, but it is worth it.

_She_ is worth it.

"Hello, Rumplestiltskin," she says. He knew she would be here (of course he did; he knows her routine, her schedule, down to the average amount of time she spends over her iced tea laughing with the wolf-girl, and if that's wrong, he doesn't care). He knew she would be here, but it is still a shock to feel her attention so steadfast on him.

"Belle," he says, and it is pleasant to be able to say her name even if he no longer has the right to add 'darling' or 'dear' to it. His cane is useful in situations like this, giving him a place to set his hands, an excuse to shift his weight.

"How are you?" she asks, her hands loose at her sides. She is not quite casual, not quite nervous, but she is making no move to leave either, so Rumplestiltskin doesn't despair.

"I'm well," he replies, not quite a lie. He has not seen her since he cut his losses (since he bandaged the wound composed of stark terror and damaging pain that had stabbed so deeply at the knowledge of town lines and overzealous fathers and dark caves too much like a certain underground prison). He has not seen her, but now she is here, and he does not want to leave. He relishes the exquisite pain she (her presence, her attention, her nearness, her distance) inflicts. So he searches for something to say, finds it in the likeliest of places. "How's the library? Is it sufficient? Do you need any—"

"It's wonderful!" She beams, radiant and beautiful. Her smile is happy and sweet, but it is not the smile he outlined in his self-made deal, so he is safe. "There are so many books, and I haven't read any of them. Well…I have _now_, but I hadn't before. Princess Abigail and Ruby have been helping me clean it all up to open it." She hesitates, which is a shame. He's been enjoying watching her speak on something with passion, enjoying pretending it was him she spoke of so fondly. "Ruby said something about…library cards? She says the computer usually has a system for tracking who takes what book." She gazes up at him, shy and slow, the left corner of her mouth tucked inward as it always is when she is choosing her words carefully.

"Yes," he says, to prompt her into speaking again. "There should be a database you can set up."

"Well, I know so little about these computers…" She trails off, watches him. She is not nervous, but she is tentative, waiting for something. He wishes he knew the steps to this dance, wishes he were not crippled in this game of love and cautious flirtation. "Still," she continues when he is silent, "I do need one in order to open the library."

And now, finally, he catches on. He is surprised, because this is not hamburgers in a crowded restaurant; this is not speaking on the sidewalk in broad daylight. This is an invitation to her library where it will be only her and him. Only _them_.

He is surprised, but he is quick to take advantage.

"Oh. _I_ could set it up for you. If you'd like." No bold words and self-assured statements here (never around her). Only quiet hope he doesn't know whether to conceal from her or allow to show. He has spent too many long centuries manipulating others to know, now, how many of his own emotions and reactions and words are genuine and how many contrived.

Her smile (_the_ smile) is quick and happy, stunning him so that he has to readjust his weight again, has to lean heavily on his cane. "I'd like that. Thank you."

"When shall I come by?" he asks, because it's important she know that she can make decisions, that he is not her master anymore. He thinks she knows already, but it cannot hurt to give reminders. He does not offer to go with her now; he wants to ration her presence, her attention, her smiles. He wants them to last.

"Anytime," she says without even a flicker on her lovely, changing features to say that she is wary of seeing him too often. "I'm almost always there."

"I know," he admits quietly. A secret, as he had promised. After all, she had smiled at him—a happy, pleased, inviting smile that put sparkles in her eyes to scatter outward at her willing direction and lodge in his flesh. She once kissed him thinking she would win a knight in shining armor; maybe she has grown tired of waiting and has decided to make his armor shine for him, giving of her own beauty and goodness to accomplish it.

"I'll stop by tomorrow afternoon, then," he says hoarsely, and shifts his grip on his cane (pretending he is strong enough to walk away from her again; pretending it will be him and not her who walks away).

"All right." She waits again, and she is looking up at him, standing just a bit closer than propriety might dictate, but not _too_ close, and he still remembers her hand pushing him away the last time he drew too near. So he only looks back at her, and he does not move, and all his words are wrong for this moment so he says nothing at all.

Finally she nods with a small smile (he hopes it is not a disappointed smile, but then, he knows how inept at all this he really is, so he supposes it probably is). "Well," she straightens, moves away, "I'll see you tomorrow."

Fear moves like acid inside him (because what if she says no?), but she is walking away (again, always, always leaving), and she already invited him (he thinks he did not imagine it), so now it is his turn. He's not the one who left, but he is the one who locked her out, and maybe she needs a reminder that he cannot do that again. (Maybe she needs to know that he is not strong enough to do it again.)

"Belle," he calls. There is a thread of fear in his voice, and he sounds like a man who never found a cursed knife, a man he tries so hard to leave behind and yet always ends up dragging everywhere with him.

She looks over her shoulder, and she is almost but not quite smiling.

"Have you…tried a hamburger yet?" he asks.

She turns and faces him fully, eyes so blue and wide and hopeful. "No. I was waiting."

His stomach clenches tight because he is afraid she is waiting for a man who doesn't exist, afraid she is expecting a prince to emerge from his shell any day to reward her for her patience and kindness, and how is she to know that there is no prince, no knight, no hero? Only a lame spinner whose cowardice lost him everything, who was never worthy of being loved, even without a dark curse and the sins of hubris and arrogance and carelessness.

He is afraid, but more afraid of losing her, so he opens his mouth and says, "Would you like to try one tomorrow evening? With me?"

And there is that smile again, the one she gives only to him, the one that makes it hard to breathe and impossible to stop _feeling_ and strikes hope and terror all at once into his heart. A sparkling smile that curves her lips upward and just barely shows her teeth, that etches dimples into her cheeks, that sets stars afire in striking blue eyes.

"I'd love to," she says, and she means it (proof that miracles are possible even in this dull, gray world). "I've been hoping you would ask."

"I was afraid you'd say no," he confesses. The truth is scalding in his mouth, and he wants to look away, but a deal is a deal. "Now that everyone's had a chance to fill you in on all the reasons you should revile me."

She frowns, and this is why he doesn't tell these truths, why he instead keeps them buried in the deep and dark. He hates that he replaced her smile (_his_ smile) with a frown. "What they say doesn't matter," she says firmly, and he thinks that she is trying to convince them both. "Do _you_ want to eat hamburgers with me?"

"Yes," he says (a thousand _yeses_ fill his mouth, a million hopes flood his mind, a single desire burns in his soul).

"Then so do I." She smiles, but thankfully this is a different smile, a kind, pleased smile. "I'll be waiting for you, tomorrow, at the library."

He flinches at the word _waiting_ (always waiting, in vain, in disappointment, in hurt, for something that's never been and will never be), but he offers his own smile anyway. "I'll be there."

"Good day, Rumplestiltskin." Another smile, beautiful and sweet, but fortunately not the one that sparkles. He is relieved, no matter how he longs for those private smiles. Relieved because two secrets in one conversation is more than enough.

He wonders how many smiles (if any) she will give him tomorrow, how many secrets he will have to share. He hopes there will not be too many. A deal is a deal, but truth is painful.

And yet that's the deal he made: a secret shared for every special smile she gives him.

A high price indeed (the highest he has ever paid, save for his son, which was not the price of anything, only the cost of breaking a deal), but he thinks it will be worth it. Because either she will leave him after she hears too many ugly, monstrous truths (but only after he has weeks or months more of precious memories to store up and savor), or she will find the truth easier to swallow in slow, small steps and will gradually come to accept that this is who he is, that he will not miraculously transform. Either way, he will get to have her with him for a while longer, and that is the best he can ever hope for and more than enough to warrant making such a deal, unwise though it is.

After all, no one knows better than he just how much magic can offer…and how much it can take away.

But she is Belle, and so he made the deal anyway, and he is Rumplestiltskin, so he will keep it no matter how painful it is.

* * *

He should be tired when he next sees her, as he has spent every spare moment since they parted learning how to use computers and set up the database she needs. He should be tired, but she smiles with amusement when she opens the door at his knock, and she is not nervous at all as she teases him for not coming right in, and she touches his arm when she shows him the computer, so he is not. He is alive and breathless and full of hope he tries desperately to extinguish before it can be disappointed.

"You sure you know how to do all this?" she asks with a mystified glance to the keyboard.

"Oh, yes," he says, and because he was up all night studying, he is not even lying.

"I'll leave you to it then," she says.

He wants to protest; he says nothing, just turns his fragmented attention to the computer. He cannot give her what she wants, but he can give her what she needs, and for now, that is enough.

Still, he is grateful when she moves only as far as a nearby bookshelf, close enough for him to steal quick, furtive glances of her while she pretends to be checking each book for damage (he knows that she is really searching for the perfect one to read). For a while, in the companionable silence, he can imagine they are back in the Dark Castle, that he is spinning while she daydreams and pretends to clean.

But her time in the Dark Castle ended in dashed hopes and lies-that-weren't and another sacrifice for Bae's sake. And in that world, so far from his son and so dependent on his magic, he does not think it ever could have ended any other way.

But in this world, where curses cannot be broken with a kiss, where Bae is oh so tantalizingly close…in this world, maybe there can be a different outcome. (A long shot, he knows, and he stubbornly, defensively resists calculating the odds.)

When he finishes, he calls Belle over (delighted when she comes without hesitation and stands right next to him), and he shows her what he has done. For once, he wishes she were not such a quick study, if only to have excuse to come later and show her again. He knows she wants sunlight and people and public walks and openness, but he is a creature of darkness and much prefers to stay in quiet, shadowed places where no one can see them and hurt them and laugh and tear her away to cause him pain.

He likes having her all to himself, where no one but him can see her or touch her. That is not a good thing, he thinks, and is sure that Charming and Thomas and Frederick and all the other cookie-cutter princes have never imagined stealing their wives away to quiet, safe solitude. It is a flaw in himself, and maybe he will confess it to her at her next smile. But even if he does, he does not think that will expunge it from him. He will ever and always be covetous of her every look and laugh and word.

When they finish with the computer, he is silent, tongue-tied, not sure how to ask her if she has changed her mind about dinner (about him).

"Would you like to see what I've done with the place?" Belle invites him, and he is thankful for the reprieve.

He follows her through winding shelves and past cozy nooks, around chairs and back behind the circulation desk where she has stashed her own reading material. It is the first time he has seen a place of her own, something she alone possesses (her room in the Dark Castle, her room in Mr. Gold's house, they don't count, he thinks), and he is awed and humbled that she has brought him here so quickly. Here, into _her_ home.

Her home.

Here. Without him.

As always, the joy she gives him is edged with the poison of doubt. Sometimes—and maybe this is the secret he will never tell her—he wonders if it wouldn't be best for them to part ways, to admit that nothing good can come of something that _hurts_ so much, to say goodbye and let the wounds they inflict on one another begin to slowly (impossibly) fade.

But then she spins to look up at him and she takes his hand and she says, "Dinner, then?" and he (yet again, always, every time) dismisses the bleak thought. Her presence, his love for her, is painful, but it is beautiful, too, and he has so little beauty in his life that this is a mark of grace he is too weak (too desperate, too needy, too strong; maybe too much of all of those things) to turn away.

So he smiles back and nods and opens the door for her.

They walk to Granny's, and they are both quiet. He would be afraid this was already failing even before it had begun, but her hand is warm and soft in his, so he is content.

He goes tense and rigid when they enter Granny's, only long practice allowing him to retain his pretense of polite indifference. The eyes of everyone inside are like weights hurled at him, and he shifts just a bit to interpose his body between their incredulousness and Belle. They are silent now, but soon their whispers will come to life, soon their suspicious eyes will cut like blades.

He _hates_ this. Hates people looking at him, judging and condemning. Hates holding Belle's hand in the open, exposing this chink in his armor so blatantly. Hates smiling at Belle, knowing they will all raise their brows and wonder and whisper behind his back.

He hates it, but it is what Belle wants, so he keeps hold of her hand and leads her to a corner table and smiles, a pale, small smile that nonetheless leaves him drained from the effort of making it.

"Do you want to look at the menu?" he asks (an inane question, but it is all he can think to say).

"I don't think so." She smiles at him, her changeable features alight with her happiness and her hope, and he can practically hear their audience wondering what spell he has cast over her to make her look at _him_, the Dark One, that way. And what if they, too, decide to rid her of the spell? They will take her away like her father did and he won't know she is gone because she is not with him anymore and when next he sees her, she will either be dead or cursed or—

"Thank you, Rumplestiltskin." Her voice cuts through his degenerating fears, casts a smothering blanket over them. "I know…I know this isn't—isn't really your thing. But thank you for coming. Thank you for trying."

"No matter." An old phrase from an old day in an old world (but he is an old creature, so it suits).

"It matters," Belle says softly, placing her hand on his, so light and delicate and fragile. And she is giving him _that_ smile, _his_ smile, and later there will be the price to pay for that, but for now, he simply soaks it in and lets a little of his tension seep away. Because Belle is brave and strong and good, and he can pretend that nothing can hurt her or take her away from him (can lie to himself even though he doesn't lie to others).

He cannot forget that they are being surreptitiously watched, that Ruby eyes them with that reassessing stare she's had around him ever since he revealed that the sweater was his. He cannot forget, but he can focus on Belle and pretend to ignore everything else. After all these years, he is very good at pretending.

Still, despite Belle's pleasure with the hamburgers and delight with the iced tea and excitement when he asks her about the books she's read, he is happy when they stand to leave, even happier when the glass door closes between them and their audience, a shield against the assault of noise and stares and suspicion. He has no doubt that they begin to whisper again, but he is equally as certain that a reminder they all still live in homes _he_ owns and that loan payments are still due will keep them from thinking he is weak or vulnerable.

Belle loops her arm through his as they slowly walk back toward the library. The sky is dark now and they are the only ones out. He has not forgotten that he still owes her a secret for her last smile, and now that no one can overhear them, he has no more excuse to delay (no excuse, only the desire to).

He knows which secret he needs to tell. There are other, less harmful (only by a matter of degree; only in comparison) secrets, but this is the one that matters most. The one that will send her away the fastest. She will look at him and her happiness will turn to horror and then to betrayal and then to revulsion, and he does not know which one will be the most painful, but he knows they will all _hurt_.

But this is the deal, and he will not break it.

This is the secret he will tell, and this one time he will not be a coward.

"Belle," he says, and she hums acknowledgement, still looking around at all the sights surrounding them. He loves how new and wonderful everything is to her, loves that he can see things differently when she does. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Okay." She straightens and does not look at him (he is torn between disappointment and relief). But her voice is calm, if somber, and she keeps her hand on his arm.

"I made the curse that brought us here," he says (though she already knows this; another slight delay). "I sold it to Regina, knowing she would cast it."

"For Baelfire," Belle says, glancing up at him through dark lashes. The sound of his son's name after all these years (after all the dark nights fearing that he conjured him up out of madness and guilt) is like a physical blow. The realization that she is justifying all his crimes in the name of his son (just as he does) is like cold water dashed in his face.

Of course, he thinks with a sinking heart. She gave him hope and another chance, but only after he told her about Bae.

She is still waiting for a white knight, a blameless hero, still waiting for him to turn into someone better, and why did he ever let himself believe otherwise, believe that she could love him for _him_ (when _him_ as he is is so inherently, inarguably unlovable)?

But she is also, he reminds himself in a desperate attempt to avoid this new, old pain, still waiting for his secret.

"Yes," he says, a single word to cover all the crimes he's committed for all their petty and impatient reasons. "But I did more than sell it to Regina. I…_made_ her, manipulated her all her life to make certain she would cast it. She made her own choices, as do we all, but I pushed her into them to ensure that her heart would be black enough to fit the curse's requirements. So you see," he cannot even see her past his fear and apprehension, so thick and suffocating that lights and shadows swim in his vision, "I'm the one who pushed Regina toward the evil great enough to allow her to capture you and lock you away in the hopes of using you against me. That's why I was so angry, earlier, when you said it was her who kept you prisoner. I blamed her, but…it's _my_ fault."

Somewhere during that speech, they'd come to a halt, the library just ahead of them. He is glad, for her sake, that they are so close to her refuge; she won't have to run quite so far to escape the sight of him.

Only…only she isn't letting go of his arm. And she is looking up at him (he can feel the heat and weight of those piercing, insightful eyes). He wants to be brave and meet her gaze, but he does not want to see horror and disappointment and fear on her beautiful features, so he looks around at anything (nothing) else.

She is silent a long moment. He doesn't breathe for a long moment. He has his cane, but it is her hand on his elbow that truly keeps him upright.

"Why are you telling me this?" she finally asks.

She hasn't smiled at him again (maybe never will) and he has told his secret (paid his price), so he does not say that he is testing her, throwing his worst secret out there so that if she leaves, it will be quickly and it won't hurt quite as much to lose her again when she tells him she never wants to see him. (He can't say that anyway because that would be a lie.) He does not say that he wants to prove to her that honesty is not a good thing, wants her to know that of all the things she could have asked of him, his secrets are the most foolish of requests. He does not say that he cannot stand to have her always waiting, _waiting_, for him to be better than he's ever been.

"It's the truth," is all he says, and he is being honest even if it's only a half-truth, a clever evasion. He only wishes his voice wasn't a whisper, wishes his mouth were not so dry, wishes this doesn't feel as inevitable as marching against the ogres so long ago.

"Look at me, Rumplestiltskin," she says, and she might as well be holding his knife for all that he can disobey.

He tenses as he looks at her, already flinching away from what he knows he will see.

But he does not see it.

It isn't there.

His breath rushes from him in a soft sigh that rounds his shoulders, and he cannot look away from her now. She does not look _happy_, and she is not smiling, but she is not running from him either, and that is more than he had dared to dream.

"I'm sorry," he whispers miserably, and now she does smile, a sad smile that makes it look as if she is about to cry. Another terrible truth turning warmth into cheerlessness—this was a terrible deal.

"I know you've done bad things, Rumplestiltskin," she tells him (he flinches from that truth in her voice, tries to look away, can't). "And I know you make deals with desperate people. I can't say I find it too surprising that you sometimes _make_ them desperate before coming to them with your deal."

He is sure she can see his tears, but she is different (she is _Belle_) so he does not care if _she_ sees him weak and vulnerable (he does care, but he can't, not when she asked this of him). Does not care because she's the only one who's ever proven trustworthy with his secrets and truths.

"But like you said," she continues softly, "she made her own choices, chose her own fate. We all do, and it's up to us whether we choose to link our fate with yours. Like I did."

His hand shakes, as it always does, when he reaches up to touch her face. He can't help himself; it's an automatic reaction. He needs to make sure she is real.

She is.

She gives him a watery smile, and lets her hand drop from his arm when he retracts his hand. "Thank you for dinner," she says quietly as her eyes fall away from his.

"Belle," he begins uncertainly, but he does not know what else to say. He is frozen and trembling and falling (so far, so fast, and if she does not catch him, he will not survive hitting the bottom of this abyss).

"Good night, Rumplestiltskin."

He does not follow as she walks the few steps to the library door. He wants to run after her, wants to catch her, stop her, kiss her. He wants to transform into the perfect prince she wants and deserves.

But he is lame and slow and inept and clumsy. He is cursed and cowardly and his hands are black with blood and never in his life has he been worthy of anything good.

So he stands there and watches her leave.

Again.

She opens the library door. Steps inside. Turns to close it between them. Pauses. Then she looks up, grants him a vision of blue and silver and the slightest hint of the memory of a smile.

"I'll see you later," she whispers, and the door closes (opens, really, by virtue of her forgiveness).

He had known kisses couldn't break curses in this world. He hadn't known that, instead, four words could mend a shattering heart.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Wow, thanks so much, everyone, for the great reception of chapter one! It's a real treat to write for this fandom - not just because the characters and story and show are so amazing - but because you guys are out of this world! :) Hope you all enjoy this second chapter - and please let me know what you think of it!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

The clocks in his shop assure him that time is still moving. The changes in the town under Charming's driven leadership are proof that life moves on, altered and shaped by the choices of its inhabitants. For all that, though, everything seems to him to be trapped again—not in time, just in helplessness. Even locked away belowground, he hadn't felt so helpless as he does now. But then he was still tweaking his strings and pulling his threads, could feel the curse coming ever closer to completion. Now, however…now, he can do nothing.

The town line remains stubbornly impenetrable, walling him apart from the world he needs, and his pained impatience is different now, more raw and stinging, because he is _so close_. So close, and yet he cannot cross the line without losing every reason for doing so.

And then there is Belle. Belle who does not come to see him. Belle who has not spoken to him since she realized he is a monster.

Belle.

He buries himself in work because it is important. Because it is easier. It is _hard_ loving Belle, but magic is effortless and inviting, welcoming him with the ease of long practice and the familiarity of an old friend and ally. It is easier, and for a while he thinks that means it is right, but then he remembers the Prince who helped Belle, remembers him saying that it (True Love, a True Love that can be bottled, a True Love that is powerful) took hard work.

Honesty and hard work.

He has been honest, so maybe now it is time for the second half of this concoction.

It isn't easy to set aside magic, but it wasn't easy going to Granny's for hamburgers either, and that had been a gift. It is hard to leave behind his spell and potions (his hopes and miracles), but it was hard letting her go too, and he knows that was the right thing to do. He wishes (and is glad the genie is gone now because wishes are never free) that just once, something in his life would be easy.

Belle has opened the library (he knows because Henry came to tell him all about it, trying to pry information out of him with a 'subtlety' to rival either of his mothers), and he sees people coming out with books under their arms. He hopes she is busy, hopes she is successful, hopes she is happy. But if she is, then what does she need him for?

Very carefully, tucking his fear and his awkwardness beneath his tailored suit, he crosses the street and enters the library (his hands are shaking). Very intently, he gazes around the library (his stomach is tied into a maze of knots). Very slowly, he heads toward the sound of her voice, ringing softly through the library (his future is threatening to unravel before him).

She turns from young Hansel (or Nicholas) and sees him. He cannot read her sudden change of expression—it almost looks like a smile but is gone too quickly for him to be sure it is anything more than his delusional hope. His mouth is dry, the feel of fear so familiar that it, too, is like an old friend. But not an ally. Never an ally.

"Rumplestiltskin," she says, and everyone who hadn't yet noticed his entrance now scatters. She watches them go, the corner of her mouth quirking upward; he can't look away from her.

"I thought you might be able to help me," he says when she looks back at him. He thinks a flicker of surprise ghosts across her features before she composes herself.

"Oh? What did you need?"

"A book," he replies. Despite himself, he finds himself falling into his old habits of teasing and enticing her, waiting for her to roll her eyes and ask him to get to the point.

She doesn't roll her eyes, but she does say, "What type of book?"

"The type of book that tells me what food comes after hamburgers in the dinner-for-two category."

Her expression is blank and slow as she stares back at him, and his stomach unknots itself and sinks downward.

"Or perhaps," he adds quietly, looking away, "just a book on alchemy or chemistry."

He wonders if she would mind if he came to the library just for books (just to see her), just to study up on anything that can help him get to Bae (just to make sure she's all right). He wonders if he will have to use her schedule (the one he knows by heart) to rearrange his own so that he never runs into her (so that he can catch occasional glimpses of her). He wonders if this will save her from being made a target by those who want to make him pay for whatever crimes they hold against him. (He wonders how quickly she will find someone worthier of her, someone who can make her happy without hurting her, wonders if he will be able to refrain from turning such a man into another rose.)

"I think I have just the book," she says. She slips away before he can say anything, and instead of following her, he remains rooted to the floor.

_Honesty_, he thinks with an inward derisive sneer. What does Charming know? Maybe the advice itself was an attack against him, a way for the Prince to pay him back for what had happened to Snow White and the savior. And he had fallen for it like a gullible fool, had let himself believe that truth would earn him a happy ending (or at least a happy middle) when he should have known the truths about him could do nothing but corrode away what love Belle had left for him.

"Here."

At her soft voice just behind him, he turns (remembers turning to face her in this library, remembers being given another chance when he had lost all hope of any). Numbly, he takes the book she offers, not even bothering to look down at it.

"Thank you," he forces himself to say politely. As quickly as he can when the world is spinning all around him, he moves past her toward the door, and it doesn't count as running away, not when she wants him to go.

"Aren't you even going to look at it?" she asks.

He wants to keep going, wants to move past the door, wants to escape this terrible disappointment and grief. He wants to leave before she can leave him. But she is talking to him, and that's something, something better than polite silence, something better than denunciations. So he comes to a halt and he looks down at the book in his hand…and he stops breathing.

_Guide Through 101 Sandwiches._

"I was afraid you wouldn't come back." She moves to stand between him and the door, and he wants to say that he can read the emotion on her face, but if he's wrong about the pleasure and the hope shining there, it might break him. "I know you weren't…weren't too comfortable with our dinner."

"I thought…" He frowns. She hasn't given him that special smile, so he's under no compulsion to tell her this. But she is looking at him and her eyes are shining and in his hands he holds her heart. "I thought you wouldn't want to see me."

She lets out a sigh. "Would you stop thinking that? If I don't want to see you, I'll tell you."

"You did tell me," he whispers even as he clutches the book tighter.

"Once," she admits with a shrug (as if the event, the words, the desire can be so easily dismissed and forgotten). "But then I told you I'd see you later."

"_This_ is later," he observes, and he is surprised by the hint of a smirk on his own face.

Her smile, her tiny laugh, are enough to strengthen him and make him stand just that bit straighter. "Yes, it is. I…" She looks down and then up at him through long lashes. "I could take an early lunch now. I even brought a sandwich with me. We could share it."

"I'd like that," he says because maybe she didn't give him that one specific smile, but she has given him much, and anyway this is not a secret. He is pretty sure it is beaming outward from him, brightening the glow in her smile as she reaches out and brushes her hand against his sleeve before going to close the front doors.

Maybe Prince Charming knew what he was talking about after all.

* * *

"I used to turn people who displeased me into snails and then step on them," he interrupts her before she can make too many plans.

She only blinks at him, distracted from the book on interior decorating open on the desk before her. "Oh. Then I…I guess…no pet snails for the library," she says, and he loves her for the valiant way she tries to hide the tremor in her voice.

She glances around, makes certain none of the people browsing the shelves this late in the evening heard his confession. He knows they are keeping their distance (they always do around him) so he doesn't bother to tear his anxious gaze from her.

With a slight shake of her head, she bends back over her book and her notepad filled with scribbled ideas. "How about regular fish then? An aquarium would look nice behind the Poetry session, and they'd be easier to take care of than a fountain with turtles and snails."

He never forgets that he loves her, but he is often reminded just how _much_ he loves her.

* * *

He is always careful to wait until that special, private smile is gone before he tells his secret. He never wants to see it fade and die, murdered by his dark side. So he waits as she munches on grapes, watches the birds fly overhead, free to leave the town without fear of reprisal.

She has not asked him to a restaurant again, not after that first time. She finds other ways to be in the open with him, like the picnic they're on now in a quiet park during the hours she knows children are in school. Like walks in the evening after most people have gone home. Like staying in the library, curled up on the comfortable sofa she found somewhere (he suspects Widow Lucas) and reading. Like calling him at his house in the morning and telling him her plans for the day while they both eat breakfast, separate but together.

She has not yet set foot in his shop or his house, has not even come close, and she has not sought him out in person, only welcomes him when he comes to her. He could worry about that, but he chooses not to. She has not left him, has not turned him away, has not reviled him for his secrets, and he is content. He is happy. (He is breathless, waiting for the shoe to drop and crush him, for the end that is inevitable.)

The air is warm here, the sun bright, but it is Belle who seems truly radiant. If he still had scales, he would think himself a cold-blooded reptile, needing to bask in imparted heat in order to stay alive and warm and mobile. But he is a man (mostly), so he knows it is love, not warmth, that he basks in. It has been _good_, having her back, having her alive, having her with him. And this morning has been wonderful, a last memory he can savor.

But finally her smile is gone, the birds have disappeared, the grapes have all been eaten, and he has a smile to pay for.

"I promised Bae I would give up my power," he tells her, reverence in his tone, the only way he can bear to speak of his son. It is painful to speak of him; it is liberating to be able to speak of him to her. He has practiced these words, the truth etched into the very building blocks of his soul, so even though he has to dredge them up from deep inside him, they come quickly. "It was the first deal I made, and I broke it. He found a portal to a world without magic, where the curse would be gone and we would be safe. I told him I would go, but when the portal roared open like a cyclone, I was too afraid. I let go of his hand."

He cannot cry, but he wants to. If he cries, though, he will never stop, and he will break, will fold in on himself and shatter and it will be more than a chip then, will be impossible to put back together. So he does not cry, only looks straight ahead and keeps his voice a monotone.

Belle is silent. She usually is, after he tears open his chest and pulls out his pulsating secrets, glowing with unholy power, and hands them to her for her to crush to dust or to keep safe and hidden. He is usually surprised by what she says when she finally does speak (when she does not run away), but this time he is certain he can accurately predict what she will say.

_How could you let your own son go?_

_How could you be such a coward?_

_What kind of man chooses power over his own son?_

She will phrase it as a question because she is kind and forgiving, but she _will_ ask it because she is brave and loyal and she would never have let go of something she loved just because of selfish fear and possessive greed.

So this time he will not be surprised by her response.

Except that he is.

She asks nothing. She makes no accusations. Instead, she slips her hands around his arm and rests her head on his shoulder and says, "I'm so sorry."

"I _let_ him go," he repeats (she must not have heard him), and his monotone is broken by a quiet plea. "My own son."

"I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm sorry."

She will say nothing else, and in the end, he does bend and break and fold in on himself and her arms are there to catch him, her hands to save his tears from falling to cold ground, and her presence to mend him even before he can shatter.

* * *

They are reading together in the library. She has convinced him to take a turn reading aloud because, she says, she will cry through this section and if she is reading it, he won't be able to understand her through her tears. (He agrees so that he has excuse not to look at any tear she might shed.) She watches him while he reads and usually he is uncomfortable when others look at him (he knows their thoughts—_coward, lame, evil, despicable_). With her, though, he doesn't mind (doesn't know what thoughts lie behind crystal eyes and pink lips). With her, he hopes she never turns away.

She watches, her eyes dry, her lips curved upward. She is not crying; he thinks she is not paying attention to the words he reads about rings and quests and volcanoes. He is certain of it when she smiles. He was looking at the page, not her, so he can't be sure it was _his_ smile, but he's not sure this counts as a secret either, so it all comes out even in the end.

"I think you were _my_ Crack of Doom," he says, settling the book on his lap before Frodo and Sam can be saved by the eagles. "And I, too, failed the test."

She looks thoughtful, her chin propped on her hands. She is lying on her stomach on the sofa, her feet in the air. She is taking up so much room that he is squeezed into the corner against the armrest, but he doesn't mind. He feels a thrill of inward delight that she is so obviously comfortable around him.

"No," she says decisively. "I think I was your Sam, willing to take the power away from you, but so very wrong. Or at—at least, at the wrong time," she adds, shy and nervous. Offering another chance, a tiny glimpse into the uncertainty he rarely sees in her.

Like every chance she gives him, he takes it. And it has been so long, so very long since his home was their home, since she was his, since he could touch her—so long and she is so very close, so amazingly tempting. So he leans down, tilts her face upward with a single, trembling finger, and kisses her. She could tell what he was going to do, so he is almost surprised when she lets her eyes flutter closed and lifts her head toward him.

Then her lips are on his, so light and cautious and hopeful. It lasts no longer than their first kiss. It is like another first kiss, he thinks, one where he does not have to turn away temptation and fight back terrified betrayal and ruin it all (where he can do it right).

So he kisses her, a brush of lips, a taste of perfection, and then he pulls away. She smiles up at him, a delighted smile. And for this instant he is happy and there is no foreboding warning tangled up inside him, no fear. He smiles back at her and then, one hand resting on her back, goes back to reading.

Neither of them cries.

* * *

"Can I ask about him?"

He gives her a sideways look, suddenly apprehensive. They are walking through the early evening streets, paralleling the forest on one side so that she is framed against green leaves and silvery blue sky and verdant life. On his side, he is framed by the city he made sure would exist and once controlled. He wishes he could say he controlled it still, but he has been too distracted with his own concerns and Charming has firmly taken charge.

"Who?" he asks. She hasn't come back to his shop so she could not have seen him confronting the few who still think they can steal from him just because they happened to own the items in the previous world. He has been careful and hasn't hurt any of them; no need to upset Charming when they've established a tenuous truce (no need to risk losing Belle through carelessness and a short temper).

"Baelfire." Her voice is so quiet even he can barely hear it, and her caution with his secrets warms him. "I know he's yours, but…but I'd like to know about him. If that's all right."

Possessiveness flares hot and quick in him. He tamps it back, quickly, stamping it down because she has proved (just proved again) how adeptly she hides and guards the secrets he gives her and he does not want to let his suspicion and paranoia turn toward her.

She glances away, shadows cast across her always-changing features. "I understand if you don't want to talk about him," she murmurs.

"I do," he says, and is surprised that it is the truth. He stops and turns to face her, waiting until she meets his eyes. He wishes he knew how to say this (wishes he were brave enough to say it without hesitating). "I haven't…ever…told anyone about him. But…I'd like to tell you."

She blinks away tears (he tenses) and smiles (he relaxes again) and then throws her arms around him and hugs him tightly. He is bewildered, unsure why she should show so much emotion when he hasn't even told her anything yet. He is exhilarated, glad of this opportunity to hold her so close, press her heart close to his, pretend they are similar, twinned, connected irretrievably.

"Thank you," she whispers into his ear.

When they start walking again, her fingers closely threaded through his, her warmth heating him up from the inside out, he collects his oh-so-precious memories, opens his mouth, and says, hoarsely, "When he was scared, he would always hold onto me. But he wasn't scared very often; he was brave, like you."

Only later, after he has shared with her his oft-visited and careworn memories, given her more secrets for safekeeping, does he realize that she had not given him that private, beautiful smile in payment for them. Yet he had told her anyway, confided in her, trusted her.

Strangely, he does not mind.

* * *

Of all the secrets still left to tell her, there is one he wishes more than anything to avoid. He's already told her that he lost his wife, long ago; no need to bring it up again or go into more, damning detail.

But a deal is a deal, and this is why he made the deal in the first place.

So he plans when he will drop this secret, like a time-sensitive curse, between them. He waits until after she has stepped close to him and kissed him. He waits until they are well into their _Guide Through 101 Sandwiches_. He waits until she is established in the community, Ruby and Charming and Henry and Abigail and Frederick and the dwarves all won over by her brilliant beauty and now staunchly on her side, able and willing to protect her from her father or Regina (or himself). He waits until he can wait no more, until he is dredging up things to tell her that are more forgotten sins than closely guarded secrets. He waits until he cannot bear to look in the mirror lest he see _Coward_ branded there in lines of mocking fire.

He waits until he is about to make his bid to break open the town line through means that would make her angry with him anyway. Easier (by degree; by comparison) to face her anger when she is no longer _with_ him, when she no longer has a stake in his actions, when she takes her heart back from his clumsy, trembling hands.

It is sneaky and manipulative, but he knows no other way to be. It's who he is and what he is, and he has tried to be something else for her, but it is not getting him any closer to his son, and the more he talks of Bae to her, the more he remembers how desperately he needs to find him, to apologize, to let him know he is loved.

After all, to think that he is unworthy of being loved is one thing his precious son should never, _ever_ have to fear.

For a time, he considers inviting her to a dinner at Granny's, taking her out in front of everyone and giving her what she had wanted that first time, but in the end he doesn't. He doesn't want to curry favor or try to earn some kind of points or pretend to something he isn't. Besides (and he hates that he knows this, thinks it, but it's his nature), she would know the instant he asked her that he was planning something and the game would be up.

So instead he ensures good weather, coaxes the sun out from behind the clouds it's been using as cover, and takes her out on a picnic. Usually, they eat at a park and sit on a bench, but he takes special care with this instance. He prepares fried chicken and several side salads (no sandwiches; no false pretenses that this is just another of their lunches together), brings iced tea (with the extraordinary amounts of sugar she likes in it), spreads it all out on a blanket (a blue one that matches her eyes and helps the sky frame her above and below in sapphire), not in a park, but outside the cabin he keeps in the woods (a risk, since she'll have no quick way back to town, but it will give him time to tell her the whole story before she can run).

It feels like preparing a last meal.

"Thank you, Rumplestiltskin," she says when they've eaten. She's been watching him intently, waiting for him to tell her the purpose of this special occasion, but he has been careful to keep his regret, his resignation, his fear all hidden away. "This is beautiful."

He wants to say that she is what makes it beautiful, but he fears that doing so now will make her think he is only trying to flatter her, soften her before he unveils this terrible secret. So he only forces a smile and offers to retrieve a book for her if she'd like to read.

After all, she hasn't smiled at him yet, so technically, he doesn't yet owe her this secret.

As good as he is at pretending, even he can't make himself believe that.

He does owe her this (owes it to her to give her the chance, the excuse, to walk away). Owes it to her to warn her that he has killed before, killed a woman he promised to protect and cherish (no vows to love, though, not for him and certainly not for her). Owes it to her to remind her that she is in the presence of a murderer, and who is to say he will not do it again? (He knows he would not, knows he could never, but how is she to know that, to trust him after all the pain he has caused her?) So he will tell her, and it will hurt—her just as much as him because even he can no longer deny the fact that she does love him (though he still does not know why).

Belle purses her lips and then cocks her head. "Ruby thinks you're going to propose. She said that's why you asked to bring me out here, for privacy, to make it more romantic."

"Indeed?" His tone is flat (his heart is squeezed between two conflicting desires). "She warned you not to come, did she?"

"Not in so many words." Belle giggles, and the sound is so melodious and sweet that for an instant he forgets what he plans to do to her heart. "She's not sure what to think of you anymore."

"And you?" he asks. The desire is strong (and it will be his last chance), so he reaches out and strokes a careful finger down her cheek. "Do you know what to think of me?"

She smiles a secretive smile, eyes soft and sparkling so brightly that she might mistake him as a knight with gleaming armor simply from the glare. "You're not as complicated as you think you are, Rumplestiltskin," she teases, and he loves her so much that he thinks he might die, in that moment, simply because he feels so much all at once that he cannot contain it all.

He shouldn't, not when he is living out his last moments with her, but he is weak and she is smiling so invitingly, so he leans forward and kisses her, drinking in her smile, hiding it away inside him to take the place of his heart and his secrets. Her lips are soft and warm and beautiful, just like her, everything he wants and cannot have. But then, wanting what he cannot have has ever and always been his defining sin.

The sky is clear and cloudless, but her hands are like raindrops in his hair, trickling down and sending a shiver through him. The sun is shining brightly, but her smile when she pulls away to meet his gaze outshines it. His soul is shriveled and cold and so lonely, but hers finds and nurtures his. She is a miracle, living and breathing in his arms, and for an instant he thinks that he can keep her, imagines that they will be together always, dreams that she will stay by his side and help him find his son.

But then she smiles that precious, oh-so-valuable smile up at him. Sweet and shy and private and special, and he is doomed. Because now he owes her and the truth always destroys.

Tears threaten to fall before he bites them back. He will not cry, will not break, will not make her set aside her horror out of pity. A shudder ripples through him when she caresses his cheek with her hand, but her smile never wavers.

"I love you, Rumplestiltskin," she whispers.

Life is cruel (he's always known that), but he hadn't before realized just how utterly sadistic it could be. These words, the first time she's said them since fearful silence and half-lies and underground cages, and they are nothing but a precursor to the end.

"Oh, Belle." He wants to weep; instead, he smiles at her. Truth (life) is painful, honesty (love) is hard, and he is an expert at laughing at pain and capering before heartbreak and reveling in despair. Now, he learns how to smile at complete and utter desolation. "I love you too."

She reaches up and kisses him, mercy and grace and blessing all in one.

He is a coward so he wants to forget his deal in favor of her lips and hands and forgiveness. But he is Rumplestiltskin and he honors his agreements no matter how they rip and tear and shred at all of himself he has managed to retain over the past centuries. He is a man and Belle has been teaching him to be brave (makes him want to be better than he is).

So he pulls back before he wants to (he wants to stay like this forever), and he smiles (because she is), and he offers again to read to her (because he is still a coward).

It takes him three chapters before he can wrestle his fear and his desperation into submission. Belle is lying beside him, her face in shadow beneath a tree so that he cannot tell if she is dozing or awake.

"Belle," he says. She doesn't move; he owes her a secret but maybe it still counts if he says it while she is sleeping. That wouldn't be his fault, would it? And anyway, he will never be able to work himself up to telling her again, so this is his only chance.

He takes in a breath and lets out one of his darkest secrets.

"I killed my wife," he says, and he wishes he did not sound quite so conversational, as if it means nothing (it doesn't mean everything, but it should mean something, he knows). "She left, you see, left her son. Left Bae. Everything anyone could want…he deserved it all, and she…she left him. He needed his mother, and she left him with _me_."

He has to pause, has to take a breath, because letting go of Bae is the greatest sin that has ever been and it strikes far too near his own damning mistake, pours salt in jagged wounds.

"There was a pirate," he continues grimly, "and she wanted to see the world, and they said she had been captured, that her fate was so awful death could be the only conclusion. I could have fought for her. I could have, but I'd never held a sword and it was an entire pirate crew against me. So I left her because Bae needed at least one parent even if he should have had two." He breaks off abruptly (after all, justification never matters, not when actions speak louder than any thousands of words spoken over hundreds of years). It takes him a minute to compose himself and pick up the thread of his toneless narrative.

"And then…after Bae was…gone…I could have found him. I could have followed him. All she and the pirate had to do was give it to me and I could have found Bae. But they wouldn't give it to me, and she never…she never asked about him. Never asked me where Bae was. How could she leave him and then…_forget_…him?"

He swallows. He has never told this story, never put it into words, never tried to make sense of that day. But he owes Belle, owes her so much more than a secret, and she deserves to know even if it can do nothing but shatter him and break her heart and drive them so cruelly apart. Maybe she is sleeping (safe from this secret) or maybe she is listening (breaking apart at his side). He is not strong enough to look at her and find out which is true. He looks straight ahead, at a cabin he has not let Belle enter because that would be too much even for him, to take her to the place where he beat her father for a crime he didn't commit (though the crime that awful excuse of a father committed later makes it all worth it, in his mind)

"I asked her why she left, and she said…she said it was my fault. She didn't love me. Couldn't love me. So she left him. With me. And I _lost_ him. And she didn't even know. And she wouldn't give me what I needed to find him. So I killed her. Tore out her heart and crushed it in front of her pirate lover." Even still today, he feels a cold rush of anger at the mere memory, a phantom echo of the rage that had torn through him then, aided and swelled by magic. "But it was all for nothing. They tricked me. I was too impatient, too desperate, and I didn't get what I needed anyway. When I went back for it, the pirate had already used it to escape to another world. And I was left alone. Without Bae. Without anything."

Just what he deserves, he knows, but he had been so determined to make sure he'd never be tricked again, had taught himself to ensure that every deal worked in his favor. No one would ever escape or evade or trick him again; no one would keep him from Bae. So he'd made deals and searched for any and every path that could lead him to his son. Until the deal when he'd bargained for a caretaker for his large estate and fallen in love.

If Milah hadn't left, maybe he wouldn't have lost Bae. Maybe Bae would have been safe. But he hadn't been good enough for her and so she'd abandoned them both and he'd been left with nothing. It's only fitting, then, that the tale of her abandonment and death will also be the cause of losing him the woman who actually does (or _did_) love him and leaving him, once more, with nothing except an eternal search and a never-ending quest that keeps him sane just as surely as it maddens him.

"That's awful."

He flinches at her hoarse voice. Slowly, as if all the long years he has lived are finally catching up to him, he turns his head and sees Belle sitting up, wrapping her arms around her knees as if she is chilled. Her eyes are wide and wet, her features shocked and disbelieving and dismayed.

It is the very thing he was afraid of, the incredulous horror exactly what he has feared with every revealed secret, the struck and numb voice the one that has before only visited him in his nightmares. He feels himself shrinking, withering, before her (_I'll truly, _truly_ become dust_; his own words echo through his mind), and he wishes he could go back and choose to conceal this one secret.

But he has had laughter and smiles and touches and kisses and _I love yous_ and that is more than he deserves, more than should have been his, and for just this once, he will be content. He will not let his covetousness, his greediness, his possessiveness ruin this for him.

"I'll drive you back to town," he says quietly, unable to meet her eyes.

"She left you." Belle says the words as if they are foreign. He stares at her as if she is, in fact, speaking a foreign tongue. "She abandoned you and her own son without even telling you? She let you believe that she was dead at a pirate's hands? And then told you it was your fault?"

When her eyes snap to his, he is startled by the anger sparking there; not the hot anger that has occasionally been sent his way, but cold icy anger adding frost to her very being. There is still shock there, too, and he thinks that maybe she has not understood yet, not fully comprehended what he has confessed, but for now, he treasures this brief reprieve.

"Rumplestiltskin, is that why…" She is unsure suddenly, almost tentative as she reaches out to place her hand on his wrist. He stares at it, but if he is imagining the touch, he has gotten even better at pretending than he thought. It is warm and calloused against his thumb, her fingers slender and small, milky pale against his slightly darker skin. "Just because she didn't love you doesn't mean that you…that you're not worthy of love. You know that, don't you?"

He tilts his head, but her hand remains where it is. So (while terror and entranced wonder battle for preeminence within him) he lets his eyes travel up the delicate wrist, the tapered arm, the rounded shoulder, pale neck, and finally to her face. She stares at him, and all her anger, all her horror and disbelief and dismay, are gone. His vision has gone suddenly hazy, but he is almost certain that he sees tenderness there. (Ridiculous, he knows, just as ridiculous as thinking she could ever love him so truly that she could break his curse with a brush of her unflinching petal-soft lips.)

"I'm a coward," he whispers because she is waiting for an answer (a secret he can give her only because he has already passed this one into her safekeeping). "I ran away from the ogre war; she wanted me to fight. I shamed her. Women can't love cowards."

Blue eyes narrow dangerously, but she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "We're all cowards, Rumplestiltskin. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others." He is astonished when she scoots closer to him and wraps her hand even tighter around his arm. "If being afraid meant we were unworthy of being loved, no one in the entire world—in any world—would be loved. And I do love you."

"I killed her," he repeats. He has been practicing this moment for so long, afraid of it, dreading it, and he does not understand what has gone wrong (not wrong; _right_).

"I'm not your judge and jury," she says calmly, her fingers running quickly through his hair. "You've done lots of bad things, but I can't absolve you of your guilt or punish you for your crimes. I can only take you as you are and love you or leave you. And I love you."

It's the third time she's said it. The first time was a temptation, one he'd avoided by telling her his secret anyway. The second time was a puzzle because she can't love him, not after all he's done, everything he's been, the lives he's destroyed (the first life being his own). The third time is one time too many.

His self-restraint crumbles. He reaches out blindly and pulls her into him, clumsy and desperate as he wraps around her, and he wishes he could keep her forever, make her into his heart and keep her radiance and beauty inside where there only resides something dark and starving and slowly turning to drink in her light. She comes to him willingly (quick and warm and everything Milah wasn't), and her arms twine around his neck (in a way Milah's never had), and she's the one who tips her head back and covers his lips with hers.

Everything he's ever been and done tells him that this just proves that life is sadistic, toying with him, baiting him with sheer and utter happiness, giving him a taste of perfection before it rips it all away from him. He's listened to those fears (let those experiences rule him) for too long. But Belle didn't leave him, and she's helping him find his son, and she has never sneered at his secrets, and she _loves_ him. He is weak and he is a coward and he is a monster, but _she loves him_.

So he banishes that twist of guilt and foreboding and he kisses her so deeply that he brands her goodness into his flesh so that he will never be without her.

And when they're driving back to town, when she's sitting beside him with her hand placed halfway between them (when he's finally begun to believe that this is real), he glances at her and says, very quietly, "I…I know there's no reason you should believe me, but…I would never hurt you, Belle."

"Of course not," she says. She is somber as she looks at him. "I knew that already."

"How?" he asks, barely able to get the word past the deluge of emotions overwhelming him and threatening his all-important control.

"Because when you thought I betrayed you with everything, you put me in a safe place before you let your rage loose. And when you thought I could lose you every chance of ever seeing Baelfire again, you sent me back to the one place you had personally promised me would be safe." She smiles at him, then, and he has to blink away the sparkles from his vision. "And you always keep your promises."

Sometimes, he wonders if Belle is pure magic given human form. Sometimes, he wonders if she is composed solely of dreams and miracles and blessings, of goodness and innocence and kindness.

He doesn't have to wonder anymore. Now he knows.

She is.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thank you to everyone who's given me such wonderful and encouraging feedback on this story, even if it's just following or favoriting it. It means so much to me, and I'm overjoyed that everyone is enjoying it! Only one more chapter left to go after this!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

"Are you sorry?" she asks. It surprises him, though he's not sure why (the times when she _doesn't_ surprise him are few and far between).

He thinks about it a moment, pondering his answer (he can't lie, but he has to be careful in his phrasing). Belle waits, taking the book he hands her and shelving it where it belongs. It's late; the library is closed, but he offered to help her clean up. Following her through winding shelves and handing her books from the cart is a small price to pay for getting to see her, even if extra time with her also gives her time to hand him smiles he has to pay for.

He cannot help wondering why she cares if he's sorry or not for this latest confession; guilt, remorse, regret, they never matter, never count for anything. But he has learned by now that honesty (destructive and painful) matters more to her than the answer itself. And yet even knowing that, he does not want to disappoint her (wants, more than anything, to please her).

"I want to be," he finally answers.

The answer (truthful without committing to anything) seems to please her. She grins up at him and places a fluttering hand on his arm. "Good!" she exclaims. "That's very…very good, Rumplestiltskin."

He narrows his eyes at her (suspicious, distrustful, even with her). "Is it? Care to tell me why?"

"Because—" She laughs and shakes her head, her gaze falling away from his. "_Wanting_ to change is the first step. It's not change itself, but it is necessary."

"Change," he hears himself say flatly. Cold, liquid lead takes the place of blood in his veins, an alchemical feat that would impress him were it happening to anyone else.

"Yes." She is uncertain, unsure, as she looks up at him, her smile banished (a common occurrence around him). Because he has not changed yet, has not transformed from beast to handsome prince as happened to this world's version of their tale (he knows because he came across her and the wolf-girl watching it, though Belle insists Ruby had no ulterior motives in showing it to her). He has not transformed, and he never will.

He had thought he would be content with what time he could have with Belle before she gave up waiting for a metamorphosis more unlikely even than a beauty loving a beast. Had thought that he would take what he could get and that those memories would help him cope when she finally gave up on him. But now he knows: it only makes it worse.

What matter that she accepts him even knowing his secrets when she still expects him to turn into the perfect prince he never was, the knight he couldn't be for her, the hero he will never become?

Nothing, he knows (and his heart is transfused to stone). It means nothing (save that he is still as unworthy and incapable of being loved as always).

Belle smiles at him, then, and for an instant he wants to lash out at something because it's _that_ smile she's giving him, and now he owes her again (will always owe her; the debt can never be paid for all that he has done to her). "Change isn't bad, Rumplestiltskin," she tells him (lies, all lies, idealistic lies, but she doesn't know that).

"I don't like it when you talk about change," he admits, quickly because it's never wise to leave a debt unpaid for long. "It…scares me."

She blinks, then narrows her eyes. When she opens her mouth (to loose words he's sure will destroy him), he tenses and she closes her mouth and gives a slight shake of her head, almost thoughtfully. He is startled and frustrated when (for no reason at all) she smiles at him again. _That_ smile, the smile that had seemed safe to use for his deal with himself, a smile she uses only for him, and rarely (not so rare anymore).

"Why does it scare you?" she asks carefully, and her close scrutiny makes him uncomfortable.

He glances away, down at the book he's holding in his hands. It is small and compact and smells of old paper, but he does not even notice the title. "Because I can't be who you want me to be," he finally says, and he is ashamed of how tiny, how reedy his voice emerges. He is powerful and strong and it has been hundreds of years since he has been anything else, but he sounds like a spinner who couldn't keep a wife and who lost his son, and he hates it.

"Who do I want you to be?" And Belle is not looking at the books. She is looking at him, up into his eyes, her head tilted, her expression oh so very thoughtful. He shrinks away, instinctively, afraid that she will follow the weak sound of his voice and see the coward he is beneath all the layers she knows.

"Someone better," he replies hoarsely. "Someone good."

"And aren't you?" Her own voice is quiet, almost as small as his (though surely, surely for different reasons).

He's given his secrets, bought and paid for his wonderful smiles, and he doesn't owe her this.

Except that he does. He owes her everything. For all the pain and the suffering and the wasted years locked away and the terror and the heartache and the lies he's intimated. For the kisses and the touches and the _I love yous_ and the promises he gave her that he knew (even while giving them) he couldn't live up to.

He owes her.

So he meets her gaze, and he says, "No."

And then he puts the book down and turns around and walks away.

He feels himself turn to dust inside when she does not stop him.

* * *

He is spinning because it is better to spin quietly, softly, slowly, than to roar and rage and lash out when the potions and spells around him are too delicate and fragile to withstand the outburst (when his heart and his soul are too delicate and fragile). The knock surprises him; no one comes to his house, and even should Charming dare, he would not come to the basement.

For an instant, he contemplates ignoring it, but the knock sounds again, and it is tentative and urgent all at once. A desperate soul, he thinks, and so he rises because he is Rumplestiltskin and desperate souls are his life, his profession, his salvation (his reminder that he is not so badly off as they are; as he used to be).

But the desperate soul knocking at his door can't reassure him that he is good enough as he is (can only remind him that he is as bad off now as he was before his curse).

"Belle," he says, and it is just a name, but it has a potent force all its own on his tongue.

"Rumplestiltskin," she replies, and now she is nervous and awkward, shifting her weight and wringing her hands together as she stands on his doorstep.

Words come easily to him (so simple to twist them like a weapon when power is on his side), but they elude him now, twisting and darting outside his reach (because she's the one with the power, who can make or break him with only words). He feels unutterably tired, and old, and so very frail as he looks at her, and he wishes he hadn't left his cane over by his spinning wheel.

"May I come in?" she asks timidly.

Easier to say no, to turn her away and let her go free. Easier to stop pretending to her (to himself) that things between them will eventually get better, smoother, less painful. Easier to remember his hurt and grief when he walked away (when she did not call him back), to call up his frustration and impatience with all his powerful magic (so frustratingly useless to help him take one step over an invisible line) and use it to strengthen his resolve and shut the door on her. Easier to let her go and satisfy himself with his magic and his quest and his loneliness (to let his heart turn cold and immobile and protected) once more.

Easier, and for an instant he thinks about it before opening the door wider and standing aside and saying, "Of course."

Because he does not want _easy_. He wants _her_.

"How are you?" she asks him as he closes the door behind her (sealing her inside the beast's lair). He cannot tell if the question is polite or meaningful, but it doesn't matter. He would answer either way.

"Not so good." He stands there and regards her, out of place in this basement. Out of place next to him, and he wonders how they got so caught up in this tangled, twisted web of pain and heartbreak. "I thought I was close to crossing the town line, but…well, I'll start again."

"I'm sorry," she offers, and he thinks she probably is. After all, the longer it takes him to find a solution, the longer he tinkers with magic. Dabbling in darkness, he thinks, and is amazed by the similarities between her and Bae, neither one of them happy for his successes, his triumphs, his strengths. He supposes their agreement in that is proof that he should not be happy either, but he cannot consent to that, not when magic is all that will bring him back to Bae, not when it is all that saved Belle from being turned into a blank slate in a mine.

"I'll find a way," he says. Warns her. "I have to find Bae."

"Yes," she agrees quietly. She falls silent and glances around. He is grateful for this moment, this chance to observe her without having to worry about the pitfalls of conversation. But (like all good things) it cannot last. "This looks like your tower in the Dark Castle," she observes.

"It is," he tells her. "Mostly. A few additions or subtractions here and there." He would say more, but she looks so uncomfortable, surrounded by his magic (the thing she tried to take away from him with a beguiling kiss), so he catches himself, licks his lips, and looks away.

"I don't mind," Belle says suddenly, quickly, dumping the words at his feet like an offering. "I don't mind that you have magic. I mean," she offers him a mischievous smile, startling and abrupt, "I don't like you using it to hurt people. But I know it's part of you, and…and I know I kissed you, before, but I thought—I thought I was helping you. I didn't know about Baelfire and the Queen and…" She lets out a shy laugh and he knows he is gaping at her, but he cannot stop himself. "I just…I'm sorry. I wouldn't ask you to give up your magic any more than you'd ask me to give up books."

He blinks, shakes himself minutely, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it's true," she whispers, and her eyes are so intent on his that he forgets to even breathe. "And because the other night, when you left…there _is_ good in you, Rumplestiltskin, so much of it, and I don't know…I don't know why you can't see that. But it's there, and magic doesn't take that away—it's only a tool you use, I think—and I didn't want you to think that I…that because of your magic I couldn't really love you."

Time has stopped around him. Vaguely, he thinks that perhaps he should check the clock tower and make sure it hasn't once more come to an imprisoning halt. He cannot move, cannot think, cannot speak (cannot weep). He can only stare at her as she inches nearer him, her eyes so wide and bright and earnest, her smile so shy and innocent and determined, her presence sending a shockwave to ripple through him.

"Because I do," she says, and she is so close he can feel her breath ghost past his chin when she speaks. "I do love you. In the Dark Castle, I loved watching the intensity and focus you gave to mixing together your countless potions. I love how you almost seem to crackle with tangible energy when you make a deal with someone. I love the dedication so apparent in every magical spell and deal you make, the devotion you so wholeheartedly give your son."

"Stop," he whispers, the word finally propelled from him. He wants to collapse, to kneel before her, wants to bow his head and shrink away, because she should not be saying these things, should not _think _or _feel_ these things. But truth burns like fire in her eyes and caresses his soul and he knows (_knows_ down to his very bones) that she is not lying.

"Stop," he says again. He does not remember reaching out, but her arms fit just so against the palms of his hands and she is stepping forward until he can feel her whole body next to his. "You don't know what I've done with magic."

"After all you've told me, I think I'm starting to get an idea," she says seriously, but she is twining her arms around his neck so she must not truly know. "I don't like everything you've done with magic, and I'm not saying that I'll ever agree with everything you do. But some things—things like healing Dr. Whale and helping Henry with his nightmares and giving your aid to David—some things are very admirable."

"Only if they give me something in exchange," he protests as his arms tighten around her waist.

Her lips twitch. "Liar."

He raises his brows in mock offense and feels his own mouth quirk crookedly, and there is nothing (nothing in either world) easier than holding her close and smiling back at her and teasing her. "Now, that is the _one_ accusation I try to avoid."

"Don't avoid me," she says. Her smile is gone and there is earnest plea and sober wisdom replacing it. "Don't keep shutting me out just because you think I won't like what I learn about you. Please."

For an instant, he wants to protest, wants to distract her without actually making the promise. Because she _won't_ like what she learns about him as he continues to barter away his secrets, and she _won't_ like that there is no hero beneath his scales and his suits. But she is here, and she already knows so much, and she is in his arms, and he is weak and greedy, so he nods and says, "I won't," and when she smiles and kisses him, he almost believes that this (this kiss, this feeling, _this_—them together) is forever.

Almost.

* * *

Fairies, as irritating as ever, dance in his stomach, tying his composure into knots, as he waits for Belle's answer.

"What's the occasion?" she asks, tilting her head, leaning over the circulation desk toward him.

He leans forward too, daring her to close the distance between them. "Do we need one?"

Her smile is pleased, maybe a bit surprised, and that makes this whole evening worth it. This time he has no ulterior motive for inviting her out to Granny's for dinner, no secrets to soften. This time he has asked because she has lasted oh so many more secrets than he thought she would and she is still capable of smiling at him. This time he asks because he wants to make her happy, and a night out at Granny's is something so simple, so little of her to ask of him, that he wants to give it to her.

So he picks her up after she closes the library and he walks with her to the diner and he does not allow the stares of the patrons to bother him (much). The few times he feels himself tensing beneath the watchful gaze of Ruby or the half-caught whisper of a person at a table behind him, he only looks at Belle and reminds himself why he is there. And as she always does, she reads him so very well, reaching out to place her hand over his and smiling and asking him questions whenever she sees him go rigid.

"Thank you," she says quietly when they finish and stand to leave. "For doing this. I know it's silly, but I like doing this. I like…I like knowing that you will."

A dozen humorous or dismissive responses flood his mind, but for once, the right one emerges (sincere and warm, as if he is not a monster). "It's not silly. And you're welcome."

Her hand slips into his as they walk back toward the library, and he is warm (really, fully warm) for the first time since she left his house without telling him.

He does not deserve her, he knows, but he has decided that he will fight to keep her anyway.

* * *

"Did you love her?" she asks one evening as they meander through softly lit, deserted streets.

"Who?" He frowns, wondering if he missed something. She has been quiet all night, scarcely saying a word, and they had been walking in silence.

"Your wife." Her face is downcast, the fall of her hair hiding all but the curve of her cheek. A cold shiver worms its way through him at her quiet voice. "Did you ever love her…before?"

His hand goes slack and heavy around hers. He stares straight ahead and sees nothing (certainly not a woman denouncing him in front of the town tavern, or a stranger tossing hope and redemption in the form of a magic bean to her pirate lover; above all, not a hate-twisted face sneering that she never loved him).

"Why do you ask?" It is all he can manage to say, and he forces himself to pretend to bravery, looks down to study her face.

She glances up, and for a startling moment, he thinks she will give him his precious smile. Her lips start to twist upward, her head starts to tilt, her eyes start to shine, but then she loses the expression. She shakes her head and looks away again, and he wishes he had a hand free to brush aside her hair and see her expression.

"I just think about her sometimes," she finally says.

He is ice and fire, a sickening combination that mixes into nausea and foreboding within him until the world itself sways all about him. If she fears him…if she is afraid that he will kill her as he did Milah…he has long regretted his actions on that pirate's ship, but never more so than in this moment.

"I think I could have loved her," he says, and smile or no smile, he tells her the truth. "But there was very little opportunity."

"Why?" Belle glances up at him through her lashes, an innocence about her curiosity that makes him hope (hope with incandescent strength) that she is not truly afraid he will rip out her heart. Not in the physical sense, anyway.

"She wanted to be free to explore the world," he says, and spares a bit of his hope to put into the prayer that Belle doesn't think he has found in her a replacement for Milah (as if she did not outshine and dwarf Milah in every way; as if there could be any comparison at all). "She did not want to be married, and before that could change, if it would, I went to war. And then she was ashamed, and then there was a baby, and she felt trapped. And…she couldn't love me so she left." He thinks a moment, then adds, "But she gave me Bae. I could have loved her for that if nothing else."

Belle is silent for several streets (though her hand tightens in his, calming the nausea roaring inside him) before she speaks, slowly and cautiously. "Is that…is that why you let me go when I said I wanted to see the world? Did you think I would leave you anyway?"

"You came back," he says instead of answering her. He does not think about that time with her in the Dark Castle anymore, not since she's alive now; he spent decades with only those memories to haunt and beguile him, but now he has her and hope. Besides, he does not like the direction of this conversation, does not like that Belle is comparing herself to the woman who abandoned Bae to a man she knew could do nothing but fail him.

"Yes, but—"

"I love you, Belle," he interrupts, turning to face her, halting them in a shadowed area between street lights. "You and Bae are…the only things I have ever loved. I wouldn't hurt you, Belle. Never. I promise. I _couldn't_."

But he knows that she will not be able to believe him. Two people he has loved and he drove them both away, hurt them both, shut them both out. And Belle knows it (the only one who does), so how can she believe him now?

But she is Belle, and so she surprises him.

"I know," she says, and she looks straight at him, fearless and confident and tender. "I wasn't worried about that, Rumplestiltskin, really. I'm not afraid of you, not like that."

He is relieved and reassured, so much so that he does not dare ask her in what way she _is _afraid of him.

* * *

"You are welcome, you know," he tells the book in his hands (thick and solid, it is a newer one Belle has found to shelve in a prominent position). "Anytime you'd like to come, you can."

She avoids him for an extra moment, but when she reaches out to take the book from him, when their fingers slide against each other, she falls still. "All right," she says.

He is tempted just to leave it there, to drop the subject and ask her if she liked the book they're both holding. _Eye Of The World_, another story set in a fantasy world he never personally encountered. But he wants to know her, wants to hear her secrets. Wants to know why she is so frightened of coming back to his shop, to his house, to anyplace he had taken her when she still lived with him.

"If you're afraid," he begins tentatively, because this is the only answer he can think of, "you don't have to be. I wouldn't keep you there. Our deal was finished a long time ago."

"I know." She tugs at the book until he releases it and then she turns and sets it upright on a shelf visible to anyone entering the library.

Everything in him is telling him to move on, but the question slips from him before he can stop it (she always makes him say and do things he never would otherwise). "Then why won't you come?"

The words fall like eggs, smashing against the floor and lying between them, sloppy and slippery. Rumplestiltskin looks down at his hands on his cane and tries to pretend that he did not just break something fragile and young (tries to pretend he has not ruined everything).

"I'm the one who left," Belle says abruptly, freezing the breath in his lungs because she says it like it's a confession. "I didn't want…I didn't think that it would be fair to just go back to those places, to be there where you wanted me, and yet deny you all the things you wanted with me. I thought…I thought it would be too painful for you." Her voice goes even quieter, so soft he almost cannot hear it. "I'm the one who left, and I didn't think it would be fair to expect all the same benefits I had before I made that choice."

"Benefits?" he questions with a raised brow. There are a hundred other things he wants to say, but that seems the safest.

"Yes." She rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and as easily as that, the air is clean and comfortable once more around them, the danger averted. "Being with you _is_ a benefit, Rumplestiltskin. I like all the things you have in your shop. I like getting to see you in your home, away from the eyes of everyone else."

His smile is soft and gentle and tender; it feels like a stranger's smile on his face (it feels like her smile on his lips). He reaches out and paints a delicate line down her cheek. "You have that here, do you not?" At her nod, his smile grows stronger, more familiar, more _him_. "And I want you there, my darling Belle. So long as you want to be there, I want you there, for tea or conversation or a simple hello."

Her smile is much more familiar, brilliant and beautiful. "Okay," she says, and that's all.

It's enough.

* * *

He is surprised, when he opens his front door, to find her standing there in the drizzling rain with tears on her face.

"I'm sorry," she says immediately. "It's just…I saw my father."

He knows there is nothing he can say. He knows that releasing the rage exploding into incandescent fury within him will not help her. And he has learned something, in his time with her, in his memories of his son. So he simply opens his arms and lets her fall forward into him. It pleases him that she came to him, that he can offer her some comfort, even as he hurts for her tears and the sobs shaking their way through her slender body.

She is soft and boneless and vulnerable (so trusting, in the arms of her beast). He leads her inside to his own library, where books will surround her and comforting quiet envelop her. It is not how he envisioned this, her coming back to his house, but she is hurting and fragile and she came to _him_ (as if she thinks he can heal her, can make something better; as if she does not think he destroys everything he touches) so he does not mind. When he lets go of her so she can sit on the sofa, she whimpers and clings tightly to him.

Touch is new to him, the intimacy and trust and _humanness_ inherent in it something he has never been very accustomed to, particularly after centuries of being one of the most feared beings in the Enchanted Forest and beyond. She was the first one to touch him, and she did it so often, the only one to breach that distance he likes to keep between himself and everyone else. Even here, where there are no scales or claws or reptilian pupils, she is still the only one who touches him (aside from the savior handcuffing him during one particular incident).

He craves her touch, longs for it, revels in his own freedom to reach out and touch her, caress her skin, take her hand, stroke her hair, all without her flinching away from him. But he is captivated, now, by the idea that _she_ craves his touch as much as he does hers. She holds onto him and pulls him down with her onto the sofa and curls up in a ball and cuddles into him, all knees and hands and tears and wet hair.

He has never seen Belle really, truly cry before, and comfort isn't something he's used to giving, but he does his best. He is awkward and clumsy and fumbling, but she holds onto him as if he is all that keeps her from drowning and at his (trembling) touch, her muscles quiver and relax. Eventually, when her sobs dwindle and fade, when her tears begin to dry and disappear, he coaxes her into lying down beside him, pillowing her head on a cushion in his lap. He distracts himself from his fury at her father (pushing away to protect, letting go, when the fool should be _holding on_) by brushing feather-light fingers through her hair. The motion, the sensation, is hypnotic, and she is quiet and relaxed and still beneath the blanket he tugged over her.

"I'm sorry I came like this," she whispers a while later, her voice lazy and slow, lilting in tandem with the movements of his hand. "But he…he wouldn't even listen to me."

"I could turn him into a fish for your aquarium," he offers, and he is joking only because he knows how disappointed she would be in him if he weren't.

Her laugh is sad and muffled. "I'll keep that in mind."

But he knows she won't. She is too forgiving, too understanding. It's how she can love him; it's part of why he loves her. Still, he passes a pleasant moment imagining what kind of fish would best suit Moe French's pompous personality. A puffer fish perhaps, or an eel. He's not sure if an eel is even a fish, but it's surely close enough.

"Why me?" she asks, interrupting his contemplations.

"Why you what?" He is fascinated by the endlessly shifting colors in her hair as he runs his hand through it, as light and shadows play against it. He is entranced by her docility, her easy acceptance of his touch.

"Why me anything," she replies, and she turns to lie on her back, her clear eyes flying straight into him. Empty, his hand hovers for an instant before tentatively alighting on her shoulder (warm and firm and so fragile). "Why do you protect me from everything? Why did you even deal for me at all? Why…why me?" (_Why do you love me?_ He hears it even though she leaves it unsaid, dangling voicelessly in the air.)

He is stunned by the question. Stunned because it is the question he wordlessly asks her all the time, the question he cannot find an answer to. But he is a monster and she is…she is _Belle_.

"You're you," he says aloud, and it is all the answer needed, but she doesn't seem to realize that. A wrinkle appears between her brows; his hands itch with wanting to smooth it away.

"But you're Rumplestiltskin," she counters, the forlorn note tainting her voice making his throat tighten even as his name on her lips touches (as it always does) something deep and shriveled within him. "You're a legend—you don't…you don't need anything. You've met people of all sorts, exotic and powerful, and outsmarted them all, and gone to so many far-off places, and…and…and I'm nobody special at all. It's just…" She swallows and looks away before confessing in a rush, "Sometimes I feel like I'm a young, silly girl with naïve notions and immature ideals, and I don't know why…don't know why you picked me."

He can't help it any longer; he lifts a finger to erase that worried crinkle, brushes his knuckles over her cheek, and curls a finger around her chin, tilts her face up toward his until he can see her eyes again, can see inside her soul.

"You're Belle," he says firmly. "There is no one like you. If there's one thing being a 'legend' has done for me, it's taught me how to spot that which is most precious—that's why I picked you. And, Belle…I do need something. I need _you_."

The free admission doesn't even hurt, especially when his words make her smile and blink away tears ("Happy tears," she murmurs reassuringly) and launch herself upward to wrap her arms around his neck. Her mouth meets his in a heated rush of sensation and _touch_, her weight wholly in his arms (her heart wholly in his hands), his hand splayed against her spine, and all he can taste is Belle.

More than air, more than food, more than magic, as much as Bae, it's what keeps him alive.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's supported and followed and reviewed this story! (And to Hermitess, thanks for the reviews, and yes, I definitely do think they're Wheel of Time fans; and really, who wouldn't be?) It's wonderfully inspiring and encouraging to know what you think of different parts of the story, the characters, and the story as a whole, so thank you so much to all who have given feedback in some form or another. And another big thank you to Saime Joxxers for being such a great beta and cheerleading this fic for me, as well as correcting my present tense! :) Hope you all enjoy the end - please let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended - just a tribute to this wonderful show and everyone associated with making it!

* * *

She starts coming to his house and dropping by the shop, to tell him good morning, to loan him a book she just finished, to ask him about something to do with the library computer, to bring him dinner. She has a litany of excuses, and he would give her more if he could. Her presence, so vibrant and light and _good_, makes everything better, eases the hot frustration within him at his inability to figure out a way across the town line, numbs the fear that ghosts from their old world are coming back to haunt him. She makes _him_ better. He is happy, and he treasures that, savors it, smiles when he sees her, and realizes, one day, that it has been days since he has even thought of waiting for her to smile before telling her the truth residing inside his awakening heart.

If this is change, he thinks, it is not as bad as he always feared. It is slow and sweet and unexpected (so much easier than it has ever been before), and he wonders if maybe True Love's Kiss works better here than he'd thought. Except it had been scary and debilitating and stunning last time, so maybe this isn't True Love's Kiss. Maybe it's just Belle.

She comes to his house one night, after dusk, and waltzes into the basement with no more than a quick knock. He watches her flit toward him, lets her take his hand and lead him outside, and smirks bemusedly at the blanket she has spread out in the backyard between the rosebush and the lilacs.

"Stargazing," she proclaims happily. "You work too hard, Rumplestiltskin. Sometimes I don't even think you sleep."

"And stargazing is the solution?" he teases without telling her that many nights he doesn't sleep, that he stays in his basement and tries and tries and _tries_ to find a way to his son. He is learning the difference between truths she needs to know and truths that don't matter so much, and he is relatively certain this is one of the latter.

"You never know, right?" She smiles at him, all mischief and fondness and pleasure, and he kisses her because it seems the right thing to do (the only thing to do).

When he maneuvers himself to the ground, lying back on the blanket, Belle arranges herself right next to him, touching him from shoulder to foot (so much touch all at once that it threatens to overwhelm him). The sky above is clear and ebony, the stars shining brightly in an effort to outshine the glow in Belle's eyes (they fail).

After a bit, he feels himself relax, tension bleeding out of him, and he takes what feels like his first breath all day. "Thank you," he says softly.

"You're welcome," she replies, and then she rolls to her side and rests her head on his chest. Surprise makes him want to go tense again, but she drapes an arm over his stomach and burrows into him, and instead of tensing, he feels himself relax into her embrace.

"I thought we were supposed to be watching the stars," he says, looping an arm around her so she can't move.

"I've seen stars before," she says, laughter in her voice. "You're the one who likes looking at them. I have better things to look at."

He stills at the words, even more so when she tilts her head and places a quick kiss on his neck, his jaw, his cheek.

"Much better things," she whispers (a smile in her voice), and then she lays her head down on his chest again and tucks herself closer to him (warm and willing and wonderful), and he cannot see the stars through the haze of disbelieving happiness coating the world in a golden sheen (but he does not need the stars when he has her).

He wonders if she will ever stop surprising him.

He hopes she does not.

* * *

He is more surprised at the invitation than he is at her hand reaching out to intertwine their fingers and tug him forward. His mouth opens but no words emerge, no answer to her sweet welcome, no response to the pleasure and tentative hope resting so apparent in crystalline blue. Her hand and her invitation and her smile, it all combines to throw him more off-balance than he has been since he turned from bottled True Love to behold his own, resurrected; since he stood at a tower window and watched a road that wasn't as empty as it should have been.

"Come up," she repeats with another tug at his hand. "I have tea. And dinner."

"If you like," he hears himself saying, and he knows it is a mistake, knows it will only (can only) end badly, but he can no more stop himself from following her back past shadowed bookshelves and up a hidden staircase to her apartment than he can leave Storybrooke with his memories intact. She keeps his hand firmly in hers, as if she knows that he needs that pressure to ground him (to assure him he is not just dreaming yet again). Or perhaps it is to steady herself because he belatedly realizes, when she pulls a key from her pocket to unlock her apartment door, that her hands are shaking even more than his.

"I don't have to come in," he tells her. He is a monster, but he has already hurt her far more than a man ever could have, so perhaps it is all right for him to spare her further pain at his hands.

"I want you to," she states with conviction, and then she swings open her door, pockets her keys, and draws him forward. Into her home. Her sanctuary. The one place he has never been.

"I would never guess you lived here," he says dryly at the sight of migrating library books stacked up on every available surface, and he is rewarded by her laugh and the slight loosening of the tight line of her shoulders.

"I have a lot to catch up on," she says simply. Her eyes are soft on his, and he is Mr. Gold so he can recognize an implied message when he hears one. She knows he has been telling her his secrets, giving them to her for safekeeping (how could she not know after all his confessions in their time together, so uncharacteristic and terrifying?), and he wonders if she thinks that she knows all his darkest secrets now. He wishes he _were_ running out of dark secrets to give her, wishes he could take her smiles without worry anymore, knowing that he had paid all he needed for them. But wishes are never free, he knows that, and that one would cost him more even than a transplanted world.

She steps into the small kitchen to get their tea, and he is left standing awkwardly near the door. He is afraid to move farther inside, afraid to frighten or crowd her. She is already nervous and clumsy and uncertain, but she keeps up a running stream of chatter directed to him, so he allows himself to stay.

"I don't have sandwiches, but then, I'm getting a bit tired of them," she says, sticking her head into a cupboard so that her voice is muffled. "But I have soup."

"Soup?" He manages a quirk of his lips when she glances at him. "The kind you made in the Dark Castle?"

She ducks her head and huffs out a quiet laugh. "No. It's from a can."

"Pity," he remarks, but smiles again when she looks up to gauge his sincerity. "But it will have to do."

"Well, you don't have to eat," she says, but she is laughing, and so he feels no more than a flicker of fear that she wants him to leave.

He pretends to be reading the titles of the books nearest him as she opens the cans and starts the soup and the tea water warming on the stove. The pretense takes so much concentration that he is startled when Belle appears in front of him and pulls at his sleeve. "Come in," she says softly, tempting him. "It's all right."

"I don't…" he begins, but trails off, because how can he finish that? _I don't want to frighten you_ (when he has already shouted at her and shut her out). _I don't want to do something wrong_ (when he has done more wrong and been given more chances than anyone has a right to deserve). _I don't know what you want of me_ (the truth, but one that might be more painful than it is worth).

"You can't eat standing in front of the door," she points out practically, and with such meager excuse, he allows himself to be guided into her sanctuary, compromising her safety (because she was supposed to be safe here but now she has invited the beast in with her).

He barely tastes the soup, despite his compliments, and he balances his teacup delicately on his knee (they sit on the couch, side by side, because she hasn't found a table and chairs yet, something he will remedy for her), desperate not to drop it and leave her with a chipped cup to obsess over when she sends him away (as he deserves). He is lost in a haze, his attention fixed on the woman at his side, the curve of her cheek, the line of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, the fall of her curls, the flutter of her hands, the frequent direction of her own gaze toward him.

"I don't think I ever thanked you for this—the library and the apartment, the books, all of it," Belle says, almost contemplatively, as she takes his empty cup from him and sets it on a small box doubling as an end table.

"No need," he says quickly (determined that she not feel any sort of gratitude to him, not when he was only redressing the balance and settling his debts). "The library's always been yours, Belle. It's why it was closed until you came."

"Rumplestiltskin…" Stars are glittering in her eyes, and this is a bad idea, he knows, because they are alone and the door is closed and she had locked it behind them and it is late and he is greedy and desperate for touch, for acceptance, for _love_, but she needs time, needs distance, needs someone _good_.

"I should go," he says. He stands, so shaky even his cane almost can't keep him upright. He starts to turn, starts to take a step to the door, but she catches his hand in hers and he is struck immobile.

"Don't go, please."

"Belle," he says, and there is a helpless note of longing in his voice as he looks down at her (because he wants this so badly, but more than that, he wants her to be well and _happy_). "You know no good will come of this."

"Do I?" she whispers. She is tugging insistently, gently, on his hand, and he finds himself sitting beside her. His cane drops from limp fingers.

"You know what I've done," he reminds her. He cannot figure out why he is breathless. "You know what I am. That's not going to change, Belle, no matter how many times you kiss me."

Her grin is quick and mischievous and so enchanting that he almost forgets entirely his resolve to not be weak and deceptive. "You never know," she teases, and she leans into him and kisses him. If she had done it a moment earlier, he would have succumbed, would have let her gentle and tame him with her touch and her lips and her head nestled against his shoulder as they talked long into the night.

But her words, her kiss, even her grin, all of it makes him go cold and numb and still. He feels her kiss as if it is a kiss she gives to a stranger (and so it is because even after all the secrets he's given her, she still doesn't know who he really is beneath it all).

"Rumplestiltskin?" She is puzzled and surprised and maybe a bit hurt as she pulls away from him, studies him so intently.

Before he knows what he is going to do, he lifts his hands and sets them on her shoulders and gently pushes her back. His voice is hollow (broken). "This is me, Belle. This is who I am. I'm not going to change, I'm not going to turn into a handsome prince, I'm not going to suddenly have hands washed clean of the blood I've shed."

"I know that," she insists, and there is a trace of impatience clouding the clarity of her eyes. Waiting. Waiting and impatient because nothing is happening.

He feels his own impatience and frustration start to build up inside him. "Do you know what I would have turned into if I'd let you kiss me, there by the spinning wheel?" he asks her bluntly. Something is screaming at him to stop, to evade, to misdirect, because this is the one secret he has never even contemplated telling her. But he won't (can't) stop. She deserves better, and if all his sins cannot convince her of that, then the truth will have to do (because he is so terribly _tired_ of waiting for the inevitable disappointment when she figures out this truth on her own). "I would have turned into an ordinary man—a less than ordinary man. A cripple, a poor spinner with a lame leg, too afraid to speak without stuttering. A coward who flinched away from every touch and groveled before soldiers and scrounged in dirt to make enough of a living that my boy could eat one meal a day. That's who I am, Belle, underneath it all, and I don't…you can't love me."

He wonders if that pitiful, weak voice is his. He wonders if it is what a broken heart sounds like (but then, he already knows what that sounds like, has heard it a million times in the silence of the space around him, the absence of her breath and her heartbeat, the absence of her from his house, the utter absence of Bae; a broken heart sounds like absolutely nothing).

"Can't I?" Belle whispers.

"Belle," he tries (hoping, _hoping_, she will surprise him as she always has before; knowing that it is useless to hope when there is so little reason to).

"Rumplestiltskin," she counters, and her hand is sliding across his chest, her other curling around his neck, turning him to her, and his hands are on her before he can stop them. "I know who you are," she murmurs (he is hypnotized, watching her face draw closer and closer, her eyes so intent, her lips so distracting). "You're Rumplestiltskin—Dark One and spinner and father and deal-maker and True Love. I loved you when you were my master in a dark castle. I loved you when you were a savior letting me go free. I loved you when you were the Dark One, sending me away and calling down wraiths to wreak vengeance you'd promised you wouldn't. I loved you when you were a stranger who wept when you saw me and trembled when you hugged me. I loved you when you were good and selfless, giving me a library and telling me goodbye. And I love you now, when you're an extraordinary man who has deluded himself into thinking he is unworthy of anything good. I love you, Rumplestiltskin—do you love me?"

He is so astounded by her words, by her touch, by her nearness, that it takes him a moment to realize that she ended with a question. Too long, for she's drawing back, her eyes widening, mouth blanching, hands falling away, stricken and afraid (_his_ brave Belle afraid). And that…that is not acceptable.

"Oh, yes," he murmurs fervently. He threads his fingers through her hair (threads his fate irrevocably with hers), leans forward to meet her (draws her toward him), and kisses her, once, twice, again, again. "How could I not love you?" he asks between kisses that seem to grow longer with each meeting of urgent, desperate lips. "You're light and beauty and goodness and…_everything_. Of course I love you."

She's somehow ended up beneath him on the sofa, and when she draws back just far enough to look him in the eyes, her hair spread in a shimmering puddle that halos her face, her hands buried in his hair, he does not think she has ever been more beautiful. "But what if I'm not all those things? What if I'm…what if _I'm_ ordinary and unworthy?"

He frowns down at her, cups her face and rubs a thumb gently over her cheekbone. "Never!" he says fiercely.

Her smile is delighted. "Now ask me."

He doesn't want to, because he knows what she is doing, but she is stroking her hands through his hair and she is _smiling_ and she did not look at him in disgust or dull disappointment when he told her there was no prince beneath his shell. So he complies and echoes her: "What if I'm ordinary and unworthy?"

"Never!" she says as fiercely as he had, then she smiles her triumph, and he would tell her that there is very little to compare between them, but she pulls him back down to her and kisses him, and he decides that there is no point.

After all, he is who he is and he never turns away a good deal, and Belle…Belle is the best deal he's ever made.

So he lets her kisses erase cruel taunts and beatings and grovelings and loneliness, lets her touch soothe old hurts and bloodless wounds and raw scars, lets her love fill up all the empty and aching places inside of him.

And when their kisses turn to an embrace and she snuggles into his side, curled so close she is almost in his lap, her hair tickling his chin, he looks into his future and he sees her there.

Forever.

* * *

If there is one thing he is good at, it is presentation. He knows how to make something look good, appear desirable, sound so tempting it cannot be passed up. This is not the same as presenting one of his countless deals, not at all, but it is similar and pretending it is less important than it truly is helps him ignore the fear gnawing away at his insides (trying to dissuade him from this terrible, wonderful plan).

He plans the whole thing out carefully. He places the special object in its cushioned resting place within a small box, wraps it in paper, places a ribbon (blue and gold because that is what she wore when she gave herself to him forever) around the box, and then carries it with him.

The setting is important, of course, and it takes him several days to decide upon the best place in which to present it. Eventually, though, he decides that it is best to give it to her in her apartment, her home, to prove that the choice is hers.

They've abandoned sandwiches in favor of anything that catches her eye or intrigues her (and there are so many things that do that), so he brings a box of pizza with him to surprise her after she closes the library. He is briefly afraid that she will not let him in, but she smiles with delight when she sees him and swings open the door without hesitation and his remaining doubts disappear.

She knows he has something planned. That is part of the presentation, to incite curiosity and perk her interest (a wise showman knows to pick a willing audience), and it works admirably well. The pizza is only half-eaten, their iced tea not yet gone, when she sets it all aside and turns in her chair (one of the new chairs to match the new table he'd procured for her) to face him.

"Something's up, isn't it?" she asks him (always so straightforward, his Belle).

"I have something for you," he replies. If this were a true presentation, the sort to end with something being owed him for the magic he performed, he would draw it out longer, would paint pictures with fantastical words and movements and gestures.

But this is a different sort of presentation, and she will not owe him anything at the end of this, and so he only stands and retrieves the wrapped box from his overcoat's pocket. Her eyes light up and she tucks the left corner of her mouth inward, nervous and excited and happy and curious all at once (a facial concoction that produces a smile on his face despite the enormity of this gesture).

"Here," he says, offering it to her. "If you'll have it."

He does not even realize that he mirrored his own words when handing her a bespelled rose until her smile turns intimate and private (_his_ smile, with which he made a deal with himself) and she stands and gives him a curtsey.

"Why, thank you," she says with a small giggle, and he can't help but bow with a flourish he hasn't used in decades. It should be awkward and unpracticed and stilted, but instead it is easy and smooth and free. He thinks that is a good sign of what is to come for them. He is no longer afraid every time he sees her (afraid he will hurt her or that she will leave or that it is not true) and she no longer hesitates before believing him when he speaks (no longer watches him with that constant uncertainty at his verity, his honesty, his faithfulness), and that is all the proof he needs that he has changed more than he ever thought he could or would. Maybe even changed enough to make a happy ending for a monster that much more likely.

"Open it," he urges her, nervous even if he is not afraid. He does not sit again, preferring to stand and watch her, leaning on his cane to refrain from trying to pace as he used to do when impatient to see if a deal would be accepted.

She takes her time, and he notices that her hands are trembling. She cannot possibly know what is in the box, but she knows him, so she knows it is important to him, and she loves him, so it is important to her too. When she sets aside the ribbon and tears away the paper and opens the box, she is silent and motionless. She stares down at what he so carefully placed inside and there is a puzzled crease in her brow.

"I…I don't understand," she says slowly. She dances her fingers lightly over the smooth, balanced metal of the knife engraved with his name, but her eyes are steadfast on him.

"I thought this would be less morbid than actually pulling my heart from my chest and giving it to you," he says with a wry smile (because humor is always better, easier, than emotion so strong it can rip him to shreds and drown him and leave him lost and aching).

Her finger traces the curves of his name, and he almost fancies that he can feel her touch simultaneously tracing the contours of his soul (perhaps he truly can). She watches him, her gaze patient and open as she waits for him to explain the gift.

And it is a gift. He's kept the knife safely, obsessively hidden since it first became his, determined never again to be controlled (to be dominated and helpless and weak). But now he freely gives it to her (_wants_ to give it to her). To her, because she is Belle and if she has not used his secrets against him, then he can certainly trust her with his knife.

"It's the Dark One's dagger," he says, standing before her as if he's a supplicant awaiting his Lady's judgment. Perhaps he is, in a way. "Whoever holds it controls the Dark One. Whoever kills the Dark One with it takes the power as their own. Once, a long time ago, I took a beggar into my home and listened to him weave me a tale of hope concerning the possibilities surrounding this dagger. I needed hope, you see. It was the Ogre's Wars and every child was sent to the front lines as soon as they turned fourteen."

Her eyes flicker. Her finger traces his name again and again, memorizing him, mesmerizing him. "And how old was Baelfire?" she asks.

His smile is mirthless, pained and tiny (but there, because she knows him so well). "He was turning fourteen."

Her nod is almost indiscernible. "So you took the knife."

"I stole it," he agrees with a nod. "And I killed the Dark One—and became the Dark One. My predecessor was in thrall to a man who had taken possession of the dagger. So when it was mine, I was careful to keep it hidden, secret and safe, and I exterminated every hint of the legends concerning it to keep anyone from searching for it and stealing it from me."

"But now…you're giving it to me." There is a question in her voice, that puzzlement still clouding her features. He is surprised that she hasn't understood, yet, what he is doing. He hurts and disappoints her all the time, and this is surely the best solution. He trusts her completely, and it will be easier (scarier, harder, but _better_) to know that she has a way to protect herself (her well-being, her heart, her future) from him. The knife works differently here, but it will be enough, he is sure.

Despite himself, he cannot tear his eyes from her hands. She has not lifted the knife yet, only leaves it in its box on the table and plays her fingertips over its etched surface.

"I'm giving it to you," he repeats, "because it's yours. Yours and Bae's. Everything that I am…is yours."

"No," she says, and he is afraid after all, breathless and choked and frozen. She takes her hands off his dagger and pushes it toward him. "Your heart, I will take," she says, locking him with her transparent gaze. When she smiles, the heart she's claimed seizes up within him. "Not literally, though, Rumplestiltskin, just metaphorically. But I'll only take it because I've given you _mine_. But this"—she frowns and gestures at the knife—"this is your free will. This is your power of choice, your individuality. And I wouldn't take that from you anymore than you'd put me in chains."

He smiles (swallows back a tactless quip about deals and dungeons) and his fears and doubts, his nervousness and wariness, all disappear. He feels weightless and free, as if he could float away (the weights of his past cut from him), and he wonders at his lack of disappointment, his swell of relief, his rush of gratitude.

"And you wonder why I love you?" he asks, gently, pleased when a light flush adorns her cheeks. "Belle, anyone else would have taken this without a second thought."

She smiles back at him, but there is a shadow in her eyes as she stands (her hand moves automatically to make certain the knife is safely on the table). "This…this was a test then?"

"No," he replies with a shake of his head (remembers another gesture that was and wasn't a test; remembers standing in a tower and watching a road for any sign of the small caretaker who contained a world of happiness within her frame and smile and beguiling words). "It…never even occurred to me that you wouldn't take it."

"Well," she says, and now her smile is uninhibited, as free as he feels, "the next gift you offer me in a small box, I'll accept."

A tremor shakes through his very soul as he winds his arms around her tightly (chaining her in an embrace she can escape whenever she wishes to, an embrace she only steps farther into). "Careful, dearest," he whispers. "Don't make rash promises."

"Three decades isn't exactly what I'd call rash," she retorts. But she isn't smiling anymore and instead of kissing him, she is staring at his chin (and the worry in her eyes begets his own). "Is that what you did?" she asks softly.

Guilt and foreboding (old and familiar and gone so briefly, so transiently) start to take root within him again. But he will not give in, will not let himself be afraid. Not of her. Not after all that has happened. "What do you mean?" he asks.

She steps away from him. (True to his word, he lets his arms fall away, lets her go free.) "Why are you telling me all these things, giving me all your secrets? Did you…" Her gaze is searching, piercing, delving past masks he is trying so hard not to wear around her anymore. "Did you make a deal with someone? You'd tell me a secret every time I…what? Smiled?"

"Only a certain smile," he confesses (he still owes her, after all, for that earlier smile she'd given him).

Her look of sad betrayal stabs deep and staggers him. He no longer feels weightless or free or unafraid. Instead, he is cold and heavy and cut adrift. And he does not know what he did wrong, does not understand where things spiraled away from him. And this is why he'd wanted her to have the knife, so he wouldn't hurt her anymore.

"You made a deal," she says quietly, tonelessly. "With who? Was it David? Ruby? My father? Were they…were they trying to make sure you didn't hurt me, or…" She trails off and looks away but not before he sees tears glittering in sparkling eyes. He hates that she will not look at him (hates that she hides the sparkles in her eyes, denying him the only form of shining armor he is allowed). Her voice is small and fragile (as fragile as their hearts). "I thought…I thought you were telling me because you trusted me."

His eyes narrow and he dares to take a step closer to her. Hope beats like a drum in his chest (hope is always loud and restless, the polar opposite of a broken heart). "Belle…do you want to know who I made the deal with?" He smiles when she chances a glance at him and indicates himself with a flourish of his hand. "Me," he tells her, careless of collecting his payment for this secret. "I made a deal with _myself_—one of my secrets for every special smile you give me."

He grimaces and it's his turn to look away (it is always too painful, too much, to look her in the eye when he makes his confessions). "Honesty, _change_"—he cannot help the way his mouth twists over that word—"trust…they're not the best colors on me. But deals are the one thing I know, and keeping deals the one thing I can do. I didn't want to lose you, Belle, and I wanted you to know my secrets even when I thought they would make you leave. In case the dagger didn't give it away, I _do_ trust you."

This is a different kind of confession. It is vulnerable and frail and new and unprecedented. It isn't a sin or a crime or a regret, and he doesn't know what to expect. She does not smile, does not speak at first, but she is staring at him with the expression he knows he wears when she smiles at him or kisses him or says she loves him, and so he allows himself some bit of hope. Allows himself to take a step nearer her.

"Belle," he says, and he does not even care that her name is laded with all the love and hope (and fear) he feels for her.

Her silence is not a condemnation. It is a breath held before a leap of faith, a pause before the dive into clear waters. It is something wondrous and new (he knows because that's how she's looking at him, as if she's never seen him before).

She draws nearer, reaches up her hand, touches his cheek (making sure he's real). When her fingers graze his skin and send shivers racing each other down his body and soul, she smiles up at him. It's a different smile, a smile he's never seen before, one even more beautiful than the smile he sold all his secrets for (he would sell his very soul for this one). She smiles and he does not think he has ever seen her happier. Does not think she has ever been more beautiful.

"I…" she finally says, and her voice strikes deep into the heart of him as if there are no steel and black layers between. "I trust you, too, Rumplestiltskin. With everything I am."

He knows, now, why she was so silent when he told her the same thing. There is a seismic eruption somewhere deep inside him and he feels both a pressure bearing down on him and shackles shattering to leave him free and unfettered. He is at once elated and terrified.

"Are you going to tell me I shouldn't?" she asks when he stares at her, but even if he would have said that, he can't. Can't because she reaches out and slides her hands up his chest and to his neck, shifting her fingers between the hairs at the back of his neck. The power of speech deserts him temporarily, but the stars in her eyes call him back to the present (to her embrace).

"No," he murmurs, and he knows it is the truth when he speaks it. Because he loves her, and he hadn't even known, really, what it was to truly love until her. But he is learning (from her and with her), learning how to love selflessly and wholly and nobly, learning how to give himself away in favor of another. So he might hurt her, but he will not harm her, and he might disappoint her, but he will not divorce himself from her. True Love, and he thinks that for all his arcane knowledge and world-spanning plans and bottled potions, he has never (until now) understood just exactly how powerful that sacred magic is.

"No," he says again. "Trust me, Belle."

It is a plea, a promise, a prayer, and a revelation all at once, and none of his presented deals have ever equaled this one.

She smiles again, that smile he has never seen before today, that smile that knocks him back a step and makes him feel warm and full and safe in a way he has never felt before. "I do," she says. Then she laughs, and he feels the laughter traveling through her, vibrating beneath his hands on her ribcage, and he cannot help but cling tighter to her (hoping her laughter, her happiness and joy, will travel from her body to his).

He thinks that now, surely, she will kiss him, and he is surprised when instead she draws back (her hands still on his shoulders, holding him together) and looks at him very seriously. One of her hands trails down from his shoulder to brush once more against his knife.

"You'll take care of this?" she says (caught between question and command). "Hide it where no one can steal it. Keep it safe."

"I will," he vows. He kept it safe for centuries when it was all that assured his freedom to continue searching for Bae (to keep him from returning to the dust ground mercilessly beneath another's boots), but he will keep it even safer now. Because he's keeping it safe not only for himself, not only for Bae, but also for Belle. And she has known more prisons, more chains, in her short, beautiful life than anyone deserves, and he will not let her be constrained again (not even in worry for him).

"Good," she proclaims, her eyes on him, and then her hands are pulling his head down to hers and her lips are warm and willing and unflinching on his.

He holds her close and drinks in her joy and radiance, and he makes himself a promise (not a deal, this time, just a simple promise). He promises himself that he will not disappoint her. He will not lose her again. And he hopes. He hopes, with all the magic and power in him (with all the remnants of the man he once was and is again) that he will not let her down.

And she smiles against his mouth (so he smiles too) and holds him tighter (and so he holds her tighter) until he cannot tell where he ends and she begins.

And she's right: it is good.

* * *

She is in his kitchen, humming as she looks through cupboards. He can smell pancakes and coffee, and he remembers introducing her to the hot drink the first morning after she'd been returned to him, when they'd both been too overwhelmed and afraid to try to sleep. (The wolf-girl must have introduced her to the pancakes.)

For a moment he thinks he is still dreaming (the idea of Belle here, in his house, following routines that had become infinitely precious in their Dark Castle, is not exactly an uncommon theme in his subconscious desires). He moves quietly to the threshold of the kitchen and watches her rummage through his refrigerator until she finds the syrup. He knows there is a small smile on his lips, can feel it there, shaped by an almost painful happiness, a fondness so strong it threatens to unmake him. She is here and that is so much more than he had ever thought to receive (for so many different reasons).

She turns, syrup in hand, and when she sees him, her smile goes shy and sweet and uncertain all at once. He'd given her keys to his house and to his shop long ago (after she'd held him together when he'd told her about letting go of Bae), because he wanted her to be safe. The wards he has established, the magic that pulses through him, the fear inspired by his name and reputation—it is all the protection he can offer her (not enough to save her from his own angry banishment, from his lies and betrayal, from his fear and secrecy; from _him_), but he had wanted her to know it was hers should she ever want or need it. He had not dared to hope, then, that she would come just to give him a smile and make him pancakes (he _had_, oh he had hoped, but it had seemed too selfish and fantastical then). But now here she is, and his bones feel too small and old to support all the happiness he holds.

"Hey," he says (the only word that will emerge past his euphoria), and her smile loses its uncertainty, turns happy and pleased.

"Good morning," she says, and she sets the syrup down and glides forward to hug him.

He is frozen an instant, and then he slides his free arm around her and holds on. Once, he would have held on so tightly simply to ensure that she stayed with him. But now he holds on this tightly because he wants to, because she is holding onto him, because he loves feeling her breathing next to him.

"Good morning," he repeats because she makes it true. (Now that he is not looking at her, so beautiful and smiling, the power of speech is returned to him.) "You're all right?" he asks, just to be sure that she came because she wanted to, not because she _needed_ to.

"I'm fine," she assures him with a caress of her hand down the side of his neck. She bites her lip and looks up at him from under her lashes, and he loves how trustingly she holds herself in his arms. "I thought we could branch out to other meals besides just lunch and dinner."

"So, breakfast, then?" He smirks at her and relishes the pink flush rising on her cheeks, highlighting dimples.

"I miss you," she admits seriously, hugging him tighter, and his heart starts beating faster, thrumming like joy and audible hope.

"I miss you, too," he returns after an instant's pause. And he does. He sees her often, usually at least once a day, but not always for long and never as often as he'd like (not in the morning when he comes downstairs, or at his side when he walks to the shop, or across the table at every dinner, or next to him when he goes to sleep). The last few days have been particularly hard since Rumplestiltskin's services have been required by the war brewing within Storybrooke's confining borders and there has been little time for visiting the library for lunch. Seeing Belle is like a breath of fresh air, and he has been suffocating for too long.

"I thought…" She looks at her hand laying flat and warm against his chest (he wonders if she can feel the rapid tempo of hope and love beating within). "I thought breakfast together would be nice."

He should not ask, not yet, not now, not when she has not yet said that she has had enough distance and time to heal the wounds he inflicted. But he _wants_ this, and she came on her own, and she seeks his touch, and she is looking at him as if waiting for him to ask, and so he hopes (a hope almost entirely untainted by fear.)

And so he asks.

"You…could come back. Here. To stay." _With me_, he wants to add, but centuries of fear (a lifetime of denial and rejection) are not so easy to set aside.

She hears the last bit anyway (because she is Belle, so special and unique and more powerful even than magic), and she stares up at him with wide, luminous eyes. He thinks she is about to smile, about to throw her arms around him (he thinks she will say yes), and for once, she does not surprise him.

"I would like that," she tells him and he basks in her light, like a dragon preening before the forgiving (loving) touch of the maiden it had thought to devour and who instead had charmed the scaled beast.

"Then stay," he whispers, and he leans down and catches her up in his arms (long, spindly arms that are, for the first time, just right) and courts her lips with the secrets in his own.

They are pulled apart (only physically, though) by the smell of something burning. She gasps and flies from his arms to the stove, muttering at and pleading with the food in turns. He watches her and feels that small, unfamiliar smile return to his tingling lips (he thinks it is a smile of contentment, and marvels at it).

The black edges to the pancakes don't bother him at all (he cannot taste anything but Belle in his mouth). He scarcely takes his eyes from her (not afraid that she will disappear, just loath to miss a moment of happiness; he is still a covetous man after all). She wrinkles her nose at her own food and plays with her glass of milk, but she keeps one of her hands in his and she is happy (a miracle more magical than anything else he has ever encountered).

"I have a secret to tell you," she finally blurts out.

He smiles and thinks of the secret he carries in his pocket (so tiny and precious, and she has already promised to accept it), but he only says mildly, "Oh?"

"Yes." She is gleeful and conspiratorial, and he delights in seeing this new color on her. "When I first…first figured out what you were doing when I smiled at you, I decided to give you my secrets too."

"For _my_ smiles?" he asks, and she is back to surprising him. He does not think anyone has ever courted his smiles or been interested in whether he made them or not (except his beloved Bae, who would make faces and tug on his sleeve until his papa laughed, but that memory is like searing fire inside him so he will keep it submerged until he can give it to Belle's cooling, soothing care).

"No." She shrugs, wraps her fingers closer around his hand. "But every time you did something I knew was uncomfortable for you, every time you _tried_ for my sake…I tried to give you a secret. Only…I don't have many"—she looks almost embarrassed by this, which amuses him—"so they were mostly just doubts, fears, private insecurities."

He gazes at her and knows that he cannot possibly love her more (knows that he will love her more every day).

"I thought…" Hesitant nervousness moves through her, and now it is his turn to tighten his hold on her slender fingers (reassuring rather than constraining). "I hoped that maybe by hearing that others were unsure and afraid, too, you would realize you weren't as unworthy as you thought."

"And are you still afraid?" he asks her. Her reasoning does not make sense, he thinks, but he does feel stronger, braver, worthy and valuable because she allows him to be the one to see her when she is weak and hurting and to be the one to hold her together, bind her back up. It doesn't make sense, but nothing in his life has ever made sense, and this is the best of all the mysteries he's encountered.

"No." Her smile is back, as strong as his grip on her hand (as if she seeks to hold him to her by the power of her smile; it would work, he is sure). "But I was thinking that maybe we could make a new deal."

"A deal? With the Dark One?" He lets his eyes glitter with soft intensity, lets his voice raise slightly in pitch. It has been so long since he could play and laugh with her (so long since guilt and pain have not weighed him down), and she sparkles brighter at his exaggerated expression and drawling tone. "Careful, dearest. You might end up selling away your soul."

"I don't want to sell my soul." She studies him carefully, but he does not need that to know this is important to her, perhaps as important as her response to his invitation to move back in was to him. "I want to sell my secrets." She takes a deep breath, and she looks just like she did just before kissing him beside a spinning wheel. "Or rather, instead of selling our secrets, couldn't we make a deal that we…we won't keep secrets from each other? We could exchange them. Share—"

"Share everything," he finishes for her. It is a daunting idea, almost terrifying in its finality, its expansiveness, but it is worth it when she explodes with happiness and love and hope.

"Is it a deal you would make?" she asks carefully, trying so hard to hide her desire for this (trying to change for _him_).

"You must have heard that I never turn down deals," he murmurs, bending forward to lean his face near hers, nuzzling her cheek with his nose and smelling the roses in her hair, treasuring the shiver that runs through her as she rests her head against his.

"And you never break your deals," she finishes for him, and kisses him on the cheek. They have shared more intimate kisses, but something about the tiny gesture completely disarms him. There is no guile or deception in it, nothing at all held back; she loves him, and she trusts him now, and so the kiss is natural to her. One day, he thinks that maybe he will be able to return those gestures without any fear or second-guessing, give them to her as easily and naturally as she gives them to him.

"So," she whispers, not sounding particularly interested in her words as she burrows her own nose into his neck, "do you have any more secrets?"

"Many," he tells her (regretfully, honestly, even gleefully cunningly because he has a small box in his pocket still that one day, when things are not so new and tentative and perfect, he will show her). There has always been a sense of urgency and finality to every secret he revealed, the idea that he would never have a chance again making him impatient and clumsy, but now…now there will be many chances, many days, many secrets. And this is a bright morning better suited to kisses than to secrets. "But we have time for them all. Later."

"Later," she agrees, and silvery blue eyes blink back bright crystal tears, and then she moves from her chair to his and she is fully in his arms. Her heart beats wildly next to (in tandem with) his, and for the first time, Rumplestiltskin is not afraid.

For the first time, he is brave.

* * *

He opens the door the next evening and she is there on his doorstep, a few bags at her feet. "I'm back, Rumplestiltskin," she says, and she smiles that special, beautiful smile that is his and his alone.

It is a gift, that smile, and they have a new deal, so he does not feel compelled to pay for the smile or for her presence and happiness. Instead, he simply smiles back at her, and he opens his door, and he says, "Welcome home, Belle."

She steps inside (into his arms) and he closes the door behind them (closes his embrace around her) shutting out the rest of the world (both worlds). Then he kisses her, and their secrets are forever safe between their lips.

The End


End file.
